Revenge
by Team Bonet
Summary: A child has been stolen. Sarah's mother, Linda, finds herself attracted to a strange new member of her acting company. And now, the stage has been set for a game of wits with Jareth, the Goblin King. 9 years before 'Labyrinth.' A sequel to 'Underground.'
1. Act I

**Notes: **A sequel to _Underground_. George and Sandra Underwood's son, Joe, has been stolen by the Goblin King (who had taken on human shape for 30 years as George's childhood friend, David Jones) from George's flat in Kent, England. Sarah Williams has been given a book by the Goblin King, _The Labyrinth._ And Sarah's parents, Linda and Robert, return home to New Hampshire from Kent following the night George's son is stolen.

The idea for parts of this story came from the Wikipedia entry for _Labyrinth_, where Linda Williams' description mentions the possibility that she met Jareth in the human world. And then I started writing, and it all got terribly serious. I hope you'll like it, regardless.

The events in this story take place nine years before those of _Labyrinth. _It is 1977.

* * *

**Act I**

George Underwood was a failure. He had failed at forming and maintaining a band, and he had failed as a freelance graphic artist. A few pub bands whose members were friends or acquaintances had requested posters (created with such high-tech materials as A4 copy paper and a Xerox machine), and his one-time band promoter, Hamish Brentshaw, had talked a great deal about a record sleeve that George was never actually hired for. George failed at retaining what haphazard part-time employment he was able to get, and found himself on the dole more often than he cared to contemplate. He was fairly certain that his marriage was on its way to becoming a failure as well, and this—in addition to work woes and the constant drizzle that passed itself off as weather in Kent—sent him running to the one thing he was not a failure at: drinking.

He drank often, and he often drank himself into a blank stupor.

All in all, George's life was not what he had hoped it would be. He had vague memories of his fifteen year-old self wanting to be George Harrison, but he had not even learned to play the guitar. He played the saxophone. Not very well, either. Probably why the band never took off. Now he had random dreams of someone influential spotting one of his photocopied band posters (flyers, if he was honest with himself) and hiring him on somewhere big. In his dreams, he was designing record sleeves for Blondie and Led Zeppelin.

Those were good dreams. He was happy, and very, very rich.

Sometimes, George had strange, sad dreams. In some, recurring and insistent, he wandered through his memories of a young man called David Jones. They went to school together. They were best mates. David was tall and skinny and had a dilated left pupil, which gave him curiously mismatched eyes—and George's dreams hinted that, somehow, this was his fault—and he sang in a band with George. Seeing him there, standing against a black sky in the slightly warped unreality of dream time, regret and a great sense of loss filled George, and he woke uneasy and pensive. He had never known anybody named David Jones. He could not think of a single David that he knew, come to think about it. The David dreams, however, he welcomed more readily than the dreams in which his son, Joe, was still alive.

Joe had been George's biggest failure.

"That baby," his mother said to her friends, unaware that George often overheard her, "was in a house with four adults. Four supposedly responsible adults. How, in God's name, does a baby disappear from a house with four _adults _in it?" She stirred lemon into her tea and frowned her despair and anger into the liquid on her cup. "Because my no good son was likely drunk. His no good Cousin Robert was out, gallivanting about town with that actress wife of his, and my fool son's useless wife was probably unaware of where her own toes were, she's so fat and stupid!"

Sandra had been devastated when Joe disappeared. She sat on the living room couch and pulled at a loose thread on her sweater as the police searched the house. They trailed their smell of sweaty police car interiors and tac-vests and the acrid metal bite of their handcuffs mixed with Velcroed gun pockets behind them as they trooped in. A short man and a plump woman in blue woollen jumpers. Sandra heard them from her place on the couch as they looked at the kitchen, Joe's bedroom, the street outside. They asked her hundreds of questions that she could not even remember answering. She was scared to think back on that night, because whenever she did all she could remember was drying the dishes. Those damned pink dishes her mother had given her last Christmas. Everything else was a blank. A total blank.

"When did you last see your son, ma'm?"

"I don't remember."

"How can you not remember? Think, m'am, did you leave the bedroom window open? Was the front door locked?"

She hung her head, worrying at the sweater thread that now trailed well past her thighs. "I don't remember."

"Look, jest leave 'er alone for now, right?" George said, putting his arm around Sandra's limp shoulders. It was as if she had caved in from within, the way she seemed to weigh nothing. "Jest find our son. Put yer bloody dogs on it, eh? Tear apart the city if you 'ave to."

They nearly had. The search had been on every front page and on every late night news programme for days. George avoided the pub, for fear of coming face to face with Joe's picture on the news, some poncy newscaster waxing all bleeding hearts over slushy piano drivel. "The _tragedy_ that has _shocked_ the county of Kent." George wanted to ram a fist down the bastard's nose. Sandra never even turned on the tellie at home. She avoided the newspapers and barely spoke to the neighbours. At night, she lay on her side of the bed, silent and distant in a way that made George's insides knot with grief and anger and the weight of his uselessness.

"I'm so sorry," Cousin Robert said over the phone, his voice thick and embarrassed. "If only I had been there. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry, man."

"S'not yer fault," George muttered. "_I _was bloody there, fer pride's sake. And I didn't see a thing. How did I do that, Robs? How did I not see a bloody thing?"

After a week, the police informed them that, having passed well beyond 48 hours missing, the likelihood that Joe was alive was practically nonexistent. "We'll keep him on our active, missing person's list," the plump police woman said, "but we don't want to give you any false hopes, Mr and Mrs Underwood. It's best to think of him as dead."

They drove home in silence, drizzle dyeing the car interior a glacial, early morning grey. George attempted to reach for Sandra's hand. She pulled it away and banged her fist on the dashboard.

"How can they _say _that? How can they just sit there and _say_ that? It's best to think of him as _dead_? What is bloody wrong with those people?!"

Her sobs seeped in through George's skin, so that he lay awake that night with those sobs still ringing in his head.

There was beer in the icebox. There was always beer in the icebox. He heaved two six-packs onto the kitchen table at 2.00AM on a Tuesday and had a private wake for his son.

* * *

"No, I see." A pause. "Yes, I understand. Thanks for letting me know, Marge."

Robert poked his head out from the kitchen. "Bad news?"

Linda shrugged her shoulders. "I didn't get the part. Marge was kind about it, said the usual nonsense about keeping me in their files." She yanked at the bracelet around her wrist, pulling on its linked silver chains as she tried not to groan in frustration. "It's a play. You show up, you audition. Pass, fail. There's no stupid file to keep."

"I'm sorry, honey."

"Yeah. Me too."

Linda Williams was not used to failure. In high school, she landed practically every lead in every school play the drama teacher dreamed up. Linda had been everybody from Cinderella to the Virgin Mary to Nora in Ibsen's _A Doll's House_. Glowing reviews and sober, "You'll go far, young lady," followed her like a puppy down the school halls. Where other parents frowned at their kids so much as wanting to lip-synch at a talent show, hers were actually supportive. They payed for acting classes and drove her to her first audition. A gaggle of their friends—excitable old ladies and grandfatherly men—joined them in cheering for her at her first, non-school play, a community theatre production of _As You Like It_. Rake thin Adrian at the community theatre referred her to a friend of his at the Riverbed Theatre Company. More glowing reviews, more accolades. "You'll go far." When a call came from her agent, Marge, about a possible West End play, she was on the plane to England as fast as her eager legs could carry her.

Robert loved her success. He admired it and bragged about it to all his friends at the office. Kept all the notices and reviews, posters, flyers, programmes. "This'll be one to show the kids," he kept saying. When their daughter was born, he would heave Sarah up by her armpits and show her the framed programme of the Riverbed Theatre Company's production of _A Street Car Named Desire._ A black and white Linda sat on a bed in a satin nightdress, long dark hair like ermine fur down her shoulders. Sarah—being only fifteen months old—could only gurgle. By the time she was six, she was right there beside Robert, telling all of her kindergarten schoolmates that, "My mommy is a movie star!"

"Actress, sweetie," Linda gently corrected her, straightening her daughter's sagging socks, "not movie star. Mommy is a serious actress."

"She sure is," Robert beamed. He folded up his shirts and placed them with business-like efficiency into his tidy suitcase. "And she'll wow those English snobs at West End and they'll have to rebuild London a second time 'cause she is gonna set the town on _fire_, ain't she, Sarah?" He whooshed out cheesy flame noises as Sarah laughed, jumping on the bed.

"Westen! Westen!" she said, echoing Robert's footballer hoots of, "West End! West _End_!"

Everything was brimming with possibilities, success and recognition frothing along the top. Landing West End would be the proverbial cherry. Linda endured the eight hour flight to London and then the drive to Robert's cousin's place in the suburb of Kent—where they had decided to stay to save on the cost of a hotel—with excitement straining within her like a chick ready to burst from its egg. She could almost feel the part sliding down her tongue, promising her notices by respected, British theatre critics, a triumphant return to Londonderry, New Hampshire, then Broadway, her picture on _Playbill_. She was such a success.

Not getting the part never crossed her mind.

Oh, she toyed with the thought. But never for long, and never seriously.

"They thought you were good," Marge said over the phone. "But not quite what they needed. Don't worry, Linds, I'll keep your name in their files."

That night, Robert took Linda out to dinner, to clear her mind. They ate roast chicken and roasted West End theatre types and revelled in their loud, American voices amidst the somewhat scandalized Kent patrons. Two bottles of Semillon Chardonnay coated over Linda's memories of the audition and Marge's phone call. She stumbled out of the restaurant singing random snatches of "Broadway Baby," Robert carrying her in his arms, like a proud groom on his wedding night. They giggled, Linda half-slumped against Robert's shoulder, pulling on his earlobe, as they rang the doorbell to Cousin George's flat.

A short police man opened the door.

"Oh. Oh, God." Linda's hands cupped around her nose and mouth. To her horror, she heard herself laughing. "Oh, good Lord, officer. Are we in trouble?"

"Do you live here?"

"It's my cousin's place," Robert said, straightening out Linda beside him. "We're staying with him."

"When did you leave the house, sir?"

"What business is that of yours?" Robert said. He frowned into the flat, looking for George, ready to level an annoyed stare at him. He spotted George on the living room couch, his arm around his wife, Sandra. They both looked like wax dummies. George looked at Robert as if he could not see him at all, before his eyes dropped to the floor in a dazed, sightless way. A nervous flutter began within Robert's stomach. "Has something happened…?"

"Oh my God," he heard Linda giggle. He shushed her, kissing her cheek.

The police man beckoned them both inside and shut the door. He said nothing as Robert joined George and Sandra on the couch. Linda stumbled into the kitchen for some water. The voice of what Robert presumed was a female police officer drifted into the living room, asking if Linda was drunk, advising her on what to drink and where to sit and for how long. It was embarrassing, and Robert could barely look at George.

"He's gone," George said, his voice flat and disbelieving. "He's just gone."

"Who's gone?" Robert said. Then, half-sitting up, "My God, Sarah?"

"She's fine," George said. He moved and talked like a sleepwalker, as if somebody else were providing him with the words. "She's asleep. We didn't want to wake 'er."

"Somebody took my son," Sandra said. She stared at nothing, twisting a thread from her sweater round and round and round her index finger. "Somebody took my Baby Joe." She hung her head. "And I can't remember. I can't remember."

"My son's gone, Robs," George said. He pushed off the couch and headed into the kitchen. The fridge door opened and closed, followed by the voice of the police lady.

"Sir, I advice against drinking at this time." Linda giggled, a gurgling, mindless sound. "M'am, please. And sir, please hand me that can." A pause, then, "Thank you, sir."

When Linda was told, next morning, she sat on the edge of the inflatable bed they had purchased, in the middle of a living room littered with Sarah's toys, books, socks and shoes. She hugged Sarah to her and could not think of anything to say to George or Sandra or even Robert.

She had been drunk. Robert's cousin had lost his son, and she had been stumbling and giggling across their kitchen, laughing at the police woman's cap and the way she kept telling George not to drink.

The flight home had been subdued and long. Only Sarah, who had not been told all of the facts yet, seemed impervious. She swung her legs and read from a little red book she had brought with her. Robert slept. Linda read the same sentence in her on-flight magazine, "The azure beaches of Cancun beckon," over and over and over.

Back home at Londonderry, the Riverbed Theatre Company cancelled Moliere's _The Hypocrite_ due to low ticket sales. Linda failed an audition for Juliet for that summer's free Shakespeare performance in the park. "We're looking for someone who doesn't look so much like that girl in the Zeffirelli movie, you know? Keep it fresh." Linda came home in a daze and hugged Sarah to her. She protested and broke free, bounding outside in the white, princess Hallowe'en costume she insisted on wearing nearly all the time now. The front door slammed, and Linda stood there as if she had blanked out on stage.

"Honey?" Robert said. "Are you all right?"

"I'm just rattled," Linda said, wandering out to the porch. She wrapped a shawl about her and sat looking at the maple tree across the yard. "It'll pass. This is just a low." She closed her eyes. "Poor George. That poor man. Did they ever…?"

"No. It's been two weeks, Linds. That boy's as good as dead. I'm sorry. It's a fucked up thing to have happen to him. George's a decent guy, damn it. These fucked up things always happen to the decent guys. It's fucked up."

"Who does that kind of thing?" Linda murmured. "Who steals people's babies? It's so…" Sarah ran out across the yard, waving a branch like a sword. Garbled words followed her as she disappeared around the front of the house. "It's so cruel," Linda said at last. "It's just cruel."

* * *

Adrian bounded up onto the stage at the rented rehearsal hall and clapped long, bony hands.

"People, as I'm sure you've all noticed, our ticket sales haven't been exactly stellar of late. Understandably, some people have left us," he said this with his hands raised against a rustling of bad blood murmurs, "and we wish them all the best, even if it leaves us a bit short."

"Let's pull a Shakespeare," Ethan, who specialized in boyish roles, called out from his place by the radiator. "I'll dress up as a girl to cover Hannah's roles."

"Yes," Adrian said. "And while we're at it, we'll buy you a fat suit as well, being as Hannah did mostly Shakespeare nurses." He waved away further jokes in a good humoured way, shushing everyone with one, dramatic finger to his lips. "We _do_ have some good news, and if you'll all pull your thoughts away from the delights of cross-dressing, I'll introduce it to you."

A few people sat forward or craned their necks in interest. Linda folded her arms across her chest and steeled herself for some drop-dead gorgeous red head or some impossibly glamorous blonde to step out from behind the curtain. Similar vibes were coming from some of the other female actresses, as well as from several of the men, who likely envisioned some handsome, Hollywood type behind the curtain. They wouldn't put it past Adrian—who made no secret of his love of youth and beauty—to have gone off and hired some ticket selling eye candy for the company.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Adrian said with all the aplomb of an Oscar night presenter, "may I present Mr David Weddell!"

The curtains fumbled back, and a tall, skinny man stepped out onto the stage. He wore faded jeans tucked into combat boots and a hideous, oversized sweater with neon coloured triangles, imitation paint splashes, and dots. A bright pink shirt collar peeked out from the neck. Short, dyed blonde hair had been mussed up in an artistic impression of bed head. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, grinning in a self-conscious, affable way at them.

"Well," he said. "Hullo, everybody. I am certainly pleased to be standing up here, getting scrutinized by all of your lovely eyes." His voice was soft, with an accent that dipped and fell in the strangest places. It was an English accent, although no one in the room could say exactly where from in England. Perhaps it was an affectation. David smiled. Nope, no affectation. He was English, all right. Those were some exceptionally crooked and yellowed teeth inside that mouth. "How do you do?"

"How do you do?" Linda echoed. She returned the somewhat startled smile he sent her way. "And _what _do you do?"

David scratched the back of his head. "I, uh, was under the impression I acted." Laughter. "But that's not what you mean, is it? Comedic roles. Adrian tells me your resident buffoon has sailed off to land's unknown. I'm here to make sure King Lear has his Fool."

"Will you be our resident cross-dresser as well?" Ethan said.

"If it's required," David said, so plainly and humble that people's laughter was half mirth, half pity for someone who took his job so seriously.

Riverbed was not exactly the Royal Shakespeare Company. They weren't even Off-Broadway, or even Off-Off-Broadway. But at least the guy did not seem likely to waste their time. The company stood up from their chairs or places along the floor or against the wall and clambered onto the stage to shake his hand and thump his back and murmur random words of welcome. There was a great deal of bowing and flourishes, curtsies and mock-pompous speeches. It all seemed to delight David in a way that hinted at his having scurried over from some pathetic, dire little theatre, the kind that makes a half-hearted mess out of a simple children's play.

"He's sweet," Linda said over lunch at a fast food joint to Robert. "Kinda jumpy. Half the time he looks as if Americans frighten him half to death."

Robert bit into a burger. "Yeah, us and our loud, colonial ways." He balled up his wrapper and aimed it at a trashcan. It bounced off the rim. "When's your next play?"

"Anouilh's _Antigone_. Some time in September. Mr Weddell'll be one of three, nameless guards. Not many speaking lines, but I think he'd be happy playing a broom on a corner."

"Really?" David said at the next rehearsal, eyebrows raised. He was, as it happened, pushing a broom across the stage, clearing glitter and construction paper bits left over from a Girl Scout meeting. "Do I look that excited? Dear me. Perhaps Adrian should produce Hansel and Gretel next. You can be the witch that snatches children, I'll be the broom."

Snatched children. Guilt banged out against Linda's ribcage, stirred to life after weeks of dormancy. Something must have shown on her face, because David paused in mid-sweep and peered at her.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"Eh?" Linda looped a strand of hair behind her ear, tugging at the ends in a nervous way. "Oh, no, no, it's nothing. Really. Just some… some sad news I read in the paper once. It's…" David looked concerned and serious, but not in the way the police had looked, or the way Robert tried to look and sound whenever he spoke on the phone to George. David was sincerely concerned, his emotions untainted by familiarity or the need to say the correct words. "It's amazing, the amount of shit we put up with in this world," she said, surprised at her swearing. Then, to her greater surprise, "Would you like to get a cup of coffee?"

He frowned in thought. Linda was so certain that she would hear a soft, polite, "No thanks," that she nearly missed the soft, strangely eager, "Yes, yes I would."

* * *

Frank Sinatra played from a coin-operated jukebox on the corner. A large, plaster Betty Boop in a red mini-dress had menus sticking out of a slit over her belly. David's fingers brushed against her plaster breasts as he pulled out two menus, and Linda tutted in amusement as he apologized for his brazenness to Betty.

"What a marvellous place," David said. Rusted street signs and soda pop adverts hung above his head, Coca Cola billboards from the 1910s nailed to the ceiling. A chipped rocking horse hung down near the jukebox, and hundreds of framed, B&W photographs of people at the beach in the 1940s frolicked away along the walls, a sea of bobbed curls, wide hips and thighs, and toothy smiles. David scrutinized a platinum blonde on a spotted towel. "What perfect teeth. This is all so horribly American."

"Horribly?"

"Oh, it's a good thing, never you fear. Similar to terribly and awfully." He cracked open a menu sheathed in warped plastic. "Oh, look," he said, "even the menu is full of little pictures. Hand drawn, too. How charming."

"You don't have that in England?"

Instead of answering, he closed his menu and put one elbow over it. His chin dropped into his palm, a grin hovering at the corners of his mouth as he looked at her. His eyes, she realized, were odd. There was something strange about his left eye. Too much pupil, and not as much blue as in the right eye. She could see brown and green and specks of blue in it, depending on the tilt of her head or the tilt of David's head or the sunlight coming in through the wide, glass windows. The effect put Linda in mind of an owl. David caught her looking, and his grin widened somewhat, his body rocking a bit, like an impatient child jogging his knee up and down.

Sweet, Linda had told Robert. Kinda jumpy.

"Was there anything you wanted to tell me?" he said after a while.

"Nothing specific, no."

A waitress took their order. Two small coffees, milk for David, sugar for Linda. After a great deal of face pulling at his menu, David settled on a cheese burger platter. Salad for Linda, vinaigrette dressing, on the side. "In other words," the waitress said in a thick, Dominican accent, "the usual for Linda, _la nena linda_." She nodded her head at David. "New kid? Welcome to Porter's."

Haphazard, afternoon traffic made its way past the windows, old, slow cars in need of a wash. A woman pushed a stroller down the street, chewing gum. Across from Porter's, a group of Black women sat outside a hair salon, reading magazines and smoking cigarettes in the fading August heat. Autumn was coming, and two of them already wore sweaters. They laughed and shoved each other in a familiar, carefree way. Linda wondered what sadness they kept inside, what tragedy sat at the corners of their minds, waiting for just the right word or image, smell or sound to bring it all back.

You can be the witch that snatches children.

Linda stirred sugar into her coffee. At the corner of her sight, David bit into his cheeseburger, pausing to pull out a soggy pickle. He had not pressed Linda to talk again, content to just sit and eat and watch the cars amble by. He passed on ketchup and drenched his fries in vinegar. One long, bony finger tapped against his thumb as his hand hovered over the perfect, plump fry to pick next.

"My husband's cousin," Linda said, "had his son stolen."

David nodded, serious and attentive.

"I was out with my husband, Robert." She paused. Odd. The word husband had never sounded as heavy as it did then. It was almost unnecessary. She referred to him as simply Robert as she told David the story of what happened that night. Her voice was even throughout it all. She hated women who could not describe anything without speaking in halting sobs, hands flapping over tears ready to spring from the corners of red, emotional eyes. Bleeding hearts.

"And it's so odd," Linda finished. "Because whenever Robert speaks to George, it's always the same conversation, how neither George nor Sandra can remember anything about that night."

"The human mind is incredibly adept at creating defences. Pain, emotional pain, is as much a threat to them as physical pain. The brain reacts accordingly, and shields them. If they cannot remember, then the memories cannot hurt them."

"Not remembering is causing them great pain. They can never be sure of what they did that night, what they left undone or didn't do well enough."

"Of course," David said. He set aside his burger with an oddly incongruous, elegant gesture. He threaded his fingers and brought his hands up against his lips, a priest at the confessional. "But at least they cannot remember what they _did _do wrong." He corrected himself with a half-frown. "Not that they did anything wrong. These things are merely tragedies. What you do or do not do is immaterial, and ultimately useless." He held Linda's eyes. "Why are you blaming yourself for this?"

Linda looked away. "I don't blame myself."

"I have to disagree." He tapped his joined hands against his lips, chasing thoughts and words in his head, turning them like pages in a book before he dropped his arms on the table. "You could not have stopped it, had you been there."

For a moment, a very brief moment, Linda could have sworn that something touched her mind. Something tentative, like a fingertip dipped into a cold lake. Thoughts and ideas, about George and the missing baby and about herself stumbling up the flat stairs, jumped sideways, as if prepared to rush out through some door. Only they paused midway and settled back where they belonged. Linda saw herself once more at the door to George's flat, saw the top of Robert's head and the way his curly hairs were dyed neon orange under the street light across the street. A tree stood behind him, a cross-hatched copper plate etching in the darkness. She could see—she could remember now—that there had been something in the tree, looking at her.

Something. Someone. No, something. She was sure of it. How odd, that she had forgotten that one detail. How very odd, that she could remember at all. She had been drunk.

The touch passed from her mind, and Linda sat at the dinner booth, David across from her and a tall milkshake between them.

"Did I order this?" she said.

"I did," David said, looking equal parts a child and an imp. "You needed some cheering up. You're a fine looking woman. You have no need of so many lines on your face."

He said many more words after that. They both did. Whipped cream passed between them on a dessert spoon, and Linda ate the cherry. They dipped two straws into either side of the milkshake and laughed at the thought of themselves as part of the soda fountain nostalgia nailed above them. Linda paused to hunt up an elastic band, pulled her hair back into a high ponytail.

"Perfect," David said.

And he said more than that again. They talked about antique cars, about their childhood that followed in the wake of World War II, he of ration cards, she of a lingering hatred of all things Japanese. They both hated it when Shaun Cassidy came on the jukebox, covering "Da Doo Ron Ron." They said nothing for a few stretches, just sat there, Linda gazing out the window, David dipping his finger into the milkshake glass, scooping up the last dregs of ice-cream.

Words piled up on top of words, but, afterwards, when Linda was on the bus back home and David had waved goodbye from the bus stop shelter, it was only five words that remained. They weaved in between every thought, ridiculous and insistent and alarming and wonderful and heavy.

You're a fine looking woman.

You're a fine looking woman.

Linda unlocked the door to her house. She called out hello to Robert, in the kitchen spreading jelly on toast, heard the radio coming from Sarah's room. She walked with quick, decisive strides to the bathroom. She shut the door behind her and looked at her face in the mirror.

Blue eyes. Fair complexion. Dark hair in a ludicrous ponytail. She pulled it off with a guilty jerk.

You're a fine looking woman.

Linda leaned forward and kissed the lips of her own reflection. "Thank you," she said. "You're not so bad looking yourself, David Weddell."


	2. Act II

**Act II**

Down underground, in Goblin City, at the heart of The Labyrinth, and in a dimension outside any other, Pam was not a very happy goblin. A messenger stood in front of him, and, as if the messenger herself had not been enough of an interruption, the message itself had been enough to unleash an acute, throbbing discomfort within Pam's head.

"Let me get this straight." He pinched the curved end of his beak. "His majesty has requested a shift?"

Pam was tall, for a goblin. In his black, castle staff uniform, he closely resembled a scarecrow stuffed with feathers. A scarecrow with the face of a crow, large, goblin ears tied flat and back with a black silk bow. He was efficient and officious and, as Advisor Royal to the Goblin King, he viewed it as a personal failure if any detail of running the castle slipped past his fingers or was executed outside of clear, strict guidelines mostly only he truly cared about.

"A minor one." The messenger pulled off a leather-clad salute. "Sir."

"No need to salute an advisor," Pam said with vague annoyance. "And how minor is this requested shift to be? I am at pains to instruct you to inform his majesty that shifting The Labyrinth, even one infinitesimal inch to the left, is a time consuming process. Do you _know_ how long it's been since we've last shifted?"

No recollection or comprehension of any sort showed on the messenger's face. She was a young goblin. All things considered, she was not entirely sure why King Jareth's advisor was reacting in this way. Her mind was occupied chiefly by delivering her message, then returning to headquarters for further messages to dispatch.

Pam sighed. "Well, it was quite obviously before your time, yes." He pulled open a drawer, took out a large, ring seal and a honey coloured stick of wax. As he worked on readying the wax, he said, "His majesty's request is a most unusual one. But then, he is himself a most unusual…" He almost said man. Human. Not goblin. That simply would not do. He settled for, "A very unusual king." He stamped the castle seal on the messenger's Successful Delivery of Confidential, Memorized, Oral Message form. "There we are."

The messenger did not take the form. She remained at attention. "I never said, sir."

"Said?"

"How minor the shift is to be." She saluted again. "Sir."

Who was teaching young goblins these things? Pam waved her onto the full message. It was short, also part of King Jareth's unusual way of ruling. Time there was when a simple, "Serve dinner early" would comprise at least five hundred words.

"Pam," the messenger said from memory, "shift The Labyrinth westward, across the Atlantic Ocean, to Londonderry, New Hampshire, the United States of America. No excuses. Yours, King Jareth."

She delivered the entire message in a measured, neutral voice, so that the words "no excuses," likely delivered with a haughty, impatient jab of Jareth's finger, merely sounded like an extra geographical point after the United States of America. What made Pam's brow ridges inch upwards, though, was the closing.

"Yours?" Pam murmured. He had never heard any Goblin King use anything but the formal, "By my hand and seal." The very idea of King Jareth looking at Pam (or, for that matter, the messenger) and saying, "Yours" made Pam mourn for the abuse and misuse of proper protocol. Well, proper protocol was safe with him.

"I, Pam, Advisor Royal to his Eleventh Majesty, King Jareth of The Labyrinth, do hereby acknowledge the receipt and comprehension of this Confidential, Memorized, Oral Message."

After the messenger had saluted (twice), taken her form, and left in a smart clump of boots, Pam blew out air through his beak. Minor shift. All across the full spectrum of the Atlantic Ocean Frequencies. Minor. Of course. He turned the word Londonderry over in his head. Did not sound all that different from English names like London or Kent or Brumby.

"What," Pam wondered, "could be so important about Londonderry, New Hampshire?"

* * *

Time was so strange, when Linda was with David. She would meet him after rehearsals for _Antigone _every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. They first drank coffee on 17 August (to her embarrassment, she found she had circled the date in red on her pocket planner), and the play opened on 10 September. That was—Linda did a quick calculation on her fingers—nine days of rehearsals and nine (possible) lunches at Porter's. Linda made sure never to meet David outside of the professional respectability of, "Just catching a quick coffee after rehearsals, Adrian. Going through our lines together. Obsessing over inflections and details, all that jazz."

So why did it feel as if she had been drinking coffee with David for months now? She had to have downed at least fifteen cups by now, and she never had more than one each day. It made her jumpy. Liable to become scatterbrained.

"What date is it?" she asked David, one fingernail toying with the frayed edge of her menu. "It's starting to feel as if rehearsals for this play have gone on forever."

"Have they?" David said. "It's all been sort of crawling for me." He snapped his menu shut. "Tell you what, it's likely all the routine. Theatre, Porter's, bus stop, repeat. Let's try something different today."

"Oh." Robert might pass them on the street. He might head out to the corner Burger King and see Linda with David. Might think something. Might jump to conclusions. "Well, I…" They might walk past Sarah's school. Might be lunchtime. Sarah might see them as she propelled herself down a slide. Mommy and some strange man. She was too young to understand. "I don't think that might be such a good idea."

"No?" He sat in thought for a while, half-slouching on his diner booth.

The pictures of smiling bathers careened into the distance behind him, cavorting above his head and away behind Linda's shoulders. David's eyes followed the pictures, lips rubbing together in thought. A pale, pink tongue poked out to lick his upper lip, and he leaned forward abruptly, as if he had just been hit with an idea. He placed his hand over Linda's and her eyes snapped down towards it. His index finger was up against the vein that led to her own index finger. It moved back and forth in a quick caress. Linda thought of snatching her hand away.

When she did, David was still leaning toward her, still sitting on the diner booth. The table still stood between them, and Linda still sat at her own booth. They even had their half-drunk coffees and platter of fries, Linda's ketchup on a separate dish. A metal Jiffy Lube sign hovered in the air behind David's head, like a cartoon character caught sneaking away, before it dropped down.

Its edge sunk into the sands of a sun drenched beach that spread out all around them.

Linda's hand hung suspended in the space between her and David. "Oh," she said. Seagulls cried out as they swooped and circled below thick, cumulus clouds above. A buxom blonde with short, wavy hair tossed a beach ball at a man who would not have been out of place in some Cary Grant movie. "Oh my God." Linda's head snapped left and right, taking in bathers, umbrellas, a dog breaking free of its leash, a little girl with a pail and bucket, before she turned uncomprehending, disbelieving eyes on David.

"Oh my God. Who are you?"

"Well, I thought we'd already been introduced, Linda Williams." He smiled. "My name is David Weddell."

"No, no, you're not. You're…" She stared as he reached out to take her hand and lower it gently down onto the table. She snatched it away. "This is—No, I'm—I can't be—"

David watched her with amusement for a while, then he pressed a finger to his lips. "Hush. When these types of things happen, you'll find it much easier going if you simply accept them."

"Accept them? How can I accept this?"

"Simple. We are inside the photograph that was, just until recently, above your head. A little girl building a sand castle. I like sand castles. And you seemed curiously opposed to being seen with me outside of Porter's. So I brought us here."

"Into… a picture?"

"Into a picture."

Linda dropped back against her booth. She studied David silently for a while, head tilted to the left. Eventually, slowly, her breathing calmed down, and the panic in her eyes was replaced by a weary incomprehension, more scepticism than alarm. "If I'm dreaming, and I ask if we're dreaming, it won't matter what you answer, will it?"

"You're not dreaming."

She nodded, never taking her eyes off him. She reached out for a fry. "How?" she said.

As answer, he slid from the booth and held out his hand. When she did not take it, he shrugged good humouredly, "As you will," and merely began to walk backwards, beckoning her to follow with long fingers. He winked, then flicked his hand in the air. A white Panama hat appeared above his head, then dropped down smartly. He reached up to tip it at a fashionable angle. By the delighted look in his eyes, it was clear that he cherished the way her eyebrows rose in guarded surprise.

"The word magic," he said, "is tricky. Because most people can't do it, it has a certain, alarming ring to it. Or a ridiculous ring, depending on your point of view. But when you _can_ do magic," he waved his hand again, and a ladies Panama hat dropped onto the table in front of Linda, "then how you do it is as hard to explain as how you write, or how you breathe. It simply is, Linda. It simply _is_."

A woman laughed somewhere. The smell of sunbaked skin dripping with salt water, smeared with coconut tanning oil, teased at Linda's nostrils. Her feet sank into fine, warm sand that gave way to denser, cooler sand underneath. It felt deliciously soothing on her toes, and it annoyed her a bit that she had not realized that David had somehow taken away her shoes.

She caught herself thinking that, and a strange, wistful smile tugged at her lips.

"When I was a little girl," she said. "I often dreamed—wished—that people could walk into pictures or drawings, like in _Mary Poppins_, you know? Bert drawing a carnival for Mary and the children. It would be so wonderful, I thought. I could go anywhere. Anywhere at all."

David held out his hand once more. "I am not certain what beach this is, or where we are, really, but I would very much like it if you would join me. I promise not to startle you needlessly."

Linda placed the Panama hat on her head.

"Lead on."

* * *

Sandra never gave up on Joe. George knew this, and he resigned himself to live with it. He stopped asking her to turn his old bedroom into a study, to let go and forget. When he had asked, during the first week after the police had warned them that Joe might never be found, she had not said a word. Merely stood looking at him, as if she could not fathom the existence of someone like him. She did not scream or cry or throw things. She merely looked at him, and he could feel the weight of her grief and outrage like a lack of oxygen, his lungs straining under the need to draw in a breath. He knew then that Sandra needed to remember Joe, to keep him alive in her mind. Not forgetting was what kept her together.

A photo of Joe took place of honour on their side table. George could not leave or return to his flat without seeing Joe's face, smiling in that dazed, pudgy way of his over the copper bowl that held the house keys.

Sometimes, George dreamed of that photo. "Hullo, daddy," it would say, in a high, childish voice George knew he would never hear. He slammed the photo down on the side table, but he could still hear its voice, a crackle and a grate along the edges of the words, as if his son were speaking through earth or through a metal sieve. "Hullo, daddy. How are you doing?"

"Please, leave me alone. I did all I could, I swear. There's nothin' else I could've done, son. Please."

He willed himself to dream of something else. Anything else. Football finals. His new boss at the steel works. Some girl in barely a bikini at the centre of the newspaper. Anything and anyone. His dreams lurched in a stubborn, viscous mass of darkness, and George saw a tall, skinny young man walk towards him across green sands like mist brushed grass topped by black, black skies. David Jones cocked his head at him in a quizzical way, as if he could not quite understand why he was there either.

"Did you lose something, George?"

"They took my son." He sobbed. He heard himself sob. "They took my son."

"They?"

Tears spilled down George's cheeks. "I keep tellin' Sandra 'e's as good as dead, but I know they took 'im. An' I couldn't do a bloody thing. An' I know, I know it's useless, 'cause 'e's as good as dead an' buried, but I can't stop thinkin' about 'im. I see 'is picture every fuckin' day as I walk out an' 'e's jest smilin' at me an' I can't stop myself from dreamin' about him, as if 'e were jest in the next room, Davey. As if I could jest wake up an' go in to see 'im again." He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, nearly bent over. "Oh God, Davey. Why did they take my son?"

David patted his shoulder. "There now, George. Don't cry." He tried to press a handkerchief into one of his hands, gave it up. "Don't cry, you silly fool. Joe is fine."

George's sobs cut off. Pinpricks dug into his spine, hollowing out his insides. "W-what did you say?"

"I said Joe is fine. Aren't you, Baby Joe?"

David drew back his leather coat, and Joe blinked sleep heavy eyes at George, nestled against David's hip as if he were lying on his cot.

"He's such a deep sleeper," David said softly, as if afraid to wake him. "Really, much less trouble than I had supposed from the little blob." He looked musingly at George. "You said _they_, George. I find that disturbing, that a thought like that could make it into your subconscious. Well," he drew his coat closed again, "that's my own fault. I couldn't resist dropping in on you, and it seems to have caused repercussions. Whether this will be an inconvenience or not remains to be seen."

A fog seemed to lift from George's mind, a thick layer of weight that he barely acknowledged out in the waking world. That he was dazed and lethargic was what he expected from the shock of losing his son. As David spoke, something clear and strong within George said that he knew what had happened to Joe, that he could remember everything that had happened on that night, so many weeks ago

"George," David said. "Don't get troublesome. Your distress is a good thing, a very good thing, but your refusal to forget about dear Baby Blob does not make me very happy."

"What did you do to—"

George's voice cut off, as easy as if David had pressed mute on a remote control. David sighed. He waved his hand as if turning the page on an invisible book. "Oh, do wake up already."

George came to beside his flat's side table. Joe smiled up at him, dazed and placid. George picked up his house keys. He looked at them doubtfully for a moment, unsure as to why he was heading out. He seemed to have blanked out there for a bit. He rattled the keys in his palm for a bit, trying to jog his memory.

Office desk. That's what he had been thinking of. He wanted to get an office desk to put in Joe's old room.

Sandra refused to give up on him, but it was time to admit their baby was not coming back. However hard it might be, they had to forget about Joe.

* * *

Robert Williams did not think often about failure. Whether others thought of him as a failure or not did not bother him, never had bothered him. He did well in school, had friends he could ride bikes or rush off to the cinema with. His parents were strict, but they were not tyrants. They loved each other, and Robert listened in horror as schoolmates spoke of their parents divorcing or dying or simply leaving. His parents were so devoted to each other that it bordered on sickening.

On a decent, B average, Robert had been accepted to the New Hampshire College and had majored in Business. Had found himself a nice internship, where he did well enough to impress his manager into hiring him full time. Accounting. It actually gave him satisfaction, tallying up columns of numbers and gaining a sense that, somewhere, somehow, his meticulous work brought order and sense to his undeniably tiny corner of the business world.

"Sounds boring," his friend, Tom, said at their five year high school reunion. The Class of '67. "You're working for The Man." Tom had not even been a hippie. He had dodged the draft simply because he had not wanted to be a soldier either. He spent the 60s listening to the Rolling Stones and working on his car. But he liked saying things like, "The Man's got your soul, bro," to Robert.

All of Robert's school friends, though, could agree on one thing: Robert had not failed in the women department. Oh, sure, Square Robert had gone off and married Linda Cornell before finally getting her into bed, but she was so drop-dead gorgeous that jokes about virginal lil'Robert died off at the mere sight of her.

"You did good," they said, eyes following Linda as she weaved across the room in search of the punch bowl.

Robert tried not to notice how their eyes mostly followed her hips, evident even in a full, knee-length skirt. All he felt as he looked at Linda was love. Deep, pure, happy love. That such a beautiful, dark-haired girl was in love with him floored him every morning, afternoon, and night. That such an artistic, driven girl was in love with him floored him even more. It all but flattened him.

"I'm only an accountant, you see," he said the night he proposed. She smiled and took his heart between her hands after saying, "Yes, I'll marry you," and never gave it back.

So how could Robert even entertain the notion of failure? Their first child together had been a girl. She closely resembled Linda, for which Robert was eternally grateful. He watched—pretending not to watch—as other mothers looked at Sarah in scarcely concealed envy and longing. Such a beautiful little girl, and he—Robert, Square Robert—was her father. _He_ got to lift her up and walk with her across the park to his lovely wife, and _he_ got to drive home with them, safe in the knowledge that other men looked at him and thought, "Some guys just have all the luck."

He slapped a magnet in the shape of a pink, flying pig over the flyer for _Antigone_, pinning it to the fridge.

"10th of September," he told Sarah, busy digging her spoon into a bowl of Rice Krispies. "And your mommy shines once more."

West End hurt. It hurt Robert as much as it hurt Linda. He wanted so badly for her to succeed. His own failure was immaterial, but he could not bear for Linda to fail. He wanted her to smile, to be happy. Such simple, commonplace thoughts. She laughed at him, in a fond, warm way, and at his earnest, schoolboy way of talking. Sometimes even Robert felt as if he were made of plastic, a dark haired Ken doll with curls. But that was fine by him, because Linda loved him.

Linda loved him.

"Put away those Rice Krispies, sport," he told Sarah. "Make way for some real dinner. Mommy'll be home in a few minutes."

It was their routine. Robert left the house at 8.00AM every Monday through Friday, met up with Linda for lunch on noon every Wednesday, came home at 6.00PM with a newspaper under his arm. Linda came home from play rehearsals at 7.00PM. On non-rehearsal days she was home before him, something you heated up in the oven or boiled on the stove top ready for them. "That's my artist," Robert would say. "So Bohemian with her instant noodles." He was the cook. He looked forward to 7.00PM, when he would pull out a roast or some smoked salmon, braised cutlets, homemade French sauces. If the mood was right—and after Sarah had gone to bed—a bottle of wine. Tonight he had fillet mignon with garlic sauce, green beans artfully arranged along the edges of their plates.

"What's this stuff?" Sarah said, pushing them away. She wore a plastic tiara with purple gemstones, some of them missing. "Daddy, really, nobody eats this stuff."

The front door opened and closed.

"Mommy eats that stuff," Robert said. "And you'll see how much she loves them." He called out to her, sauce jug at the ready.

It was a while before she answered. "Oh," she said. She wandered over to the kitchen entry. She looked at the fillet mignon as if she had committed a horrible faux pas at some fancy casting party. "Oh dear, you've done such a lovely job. I'm so sorry, Robert."

The sauce jug remained poised over Linda's plate. "For what, Linds?"

"I already ate."

"With the company?"

A pause. "Yes." Another pause. "I'm so sorry."

Robert set the jug down. "No problem," he said. He smiled reassuringly at Linda. "I'll save yours for tomorrow. Never quite the same, but it can be reheated." He waved away the guilt on her face. "Don't worry about it. You were having a good time. It's not a crime to hang out with your friends."

"No."

She did not seat with them as Robert and Sarah ate, Robert urging Sarah to eat at least one green bean. The TV came on in the den, the evening NBC news.

"—as Voyager 2 was launched into space today," a smooth female voice said. "The unmanned, interplanetary probe has been launched in the hopes of reaching Uranus and Neptune by the year 1981." Paper rustled on screen as she went through the affected motions of tapping her notes straight. "Today, August 20th, also marks the two year anniversary of NASA's launch of the Viking I mission to Mars…"

"What did she say?" Linda said.

Sarah giggled. "Mommy," she called from her place on the table, "you're the one watching the news."

Something in Linda's tone made Robert leave his seat. He came into the den, placed one hand on Linda's shoulder. The fabric felt damp, as if Linda had been out in the rain and her clothes had dried up. Strange. It had been sunny all day. Robert rubbed Linda's shoulder.

"Honey?"

"She said it's the 20th of August," Linda said, eyebrows knotted in confusion. "That can't be right."

"It is."

"But, it's been…" Her voice tailed off, her fingertips rising to her temples. "I was sure it was…" She looked up at Robert, and there was so much confusion on her face that he knelt in front of her and took her hands.

"Did something happen?" He squeezed her hands. "Linds?"

She looked at him for a moment, eyebrows twitching as she formed and broke apart thoughts rapidly. At length, she looked away and drew a deep breath. She chuckled. "Oh, good Lord, Robert. These rehearsals must be really getting to me. Can't even remember what day it is anymore. I'm gonna be such a wreck on the night of the play."

"You won't. You'll do fine." He kissed her cheek, smoothed back her hair. "Hey," he held her gaze, "love you?"

She nodded with a tired sigh, the shadow of a smile on her lips. "Love you."

* * *

A ribbon of stardust weaved above them, bright blue stars darting in and out of the clouds as they scurried across the night sky like little girls at play. Their wide, white skirts brushed the stars, trailing silver and pink and electric blues.

"It's beautiful," Linda said.

David tapped his fingers in the air, as if he were playing a xylophone, and new stars appeared and disappeared, ending with a falling star that trailed fluorescent sparks as it hurtled towards the fields beyond them. The grass rose and fell in the distance, like a dark, calm sea, distant cottages buoys and fishing boats upon the long blades of grass.

Linda watched the shooting star burst into multi-coloured flashes of light. She drew the tartan shawl David had conjured at her request around her shoulders, burying her chin in the scratchy, warm folds formed where the two ends overlapped. "How long have I been here?" she asked.

"Looked at a calendar, did we?" David said. He leaned back, arms folded behind his head. "Truth be told, I have no way of knowing. I don't think there's a real sense of time here."

"Within the pictures?"

"Oh, we're no longer within pictures, Linda." His eyes found hers, and she felt something spike within her, something warm and embarrassing. She hunched further down into her shawl, arranging the skirt of her white, calico Promenade dress over her legs. She could feel his eyes on her as he went on, speaking in those odd little dips and rises of his, nonchalant and completely at ease. "I used the pictures to cross onto this dimension. This part here, this soft and comfortable grass, is what is commonly known around these parts as The Wastes. I think somebody wanted to scare people away from them, but they're quite nice, once you get to re-arranging them."

"Dimension?"

"Dimension, yes." He hitched himself up with a jaunty, "Up we come." He pointed at a shape in the distance. "You see that? It's a tree. And that tree is at the northern border of The Labyrinth."

His breath played out over her cheek, the warmth of his skin making him more real, somehow, than he had been for all the time Linda had known him. Across the diner booth, and by her side as he showed her beaches, mountains and fields from pictures Linda clipped out of books and magazines, he had been David, no more real than the very pictures he pulled her into. Beside her, with his skin close to her, his breath and warmth unfurling between them, he was more than David. Something spiked within Linda again, and she turned her head, just so, just a little bit, keeping his profile in sight as she made sure her lips brushed against his cheek.

"Linda," he said, nonchalant as ever, "I've just pointed out the borders of The Labyrinth to you. I was hoping for a more suitable reaction than that."

She paused, thrown. "Like what? You've pulled me into pictures I know are from an issue of _National Geographic_. Did you really think the name of this place would be more impressive than that?"

A look that was almost like surprise passed through his face, a flitter of emotion that scurried away as he turned his face, careful to remain within the warm cocoon of closeness she had begun to weave around them. "I hadn't thought of it that way," he said. He lowered his voice, lips murmuring over hers, "Do it again."

"Kiss your cheek?" she said, a smile resting against his own smile.

His eyes drifted half-closed. "Kiss your mouth." And he did, and it weaved the closeness tightly around them, so that what little time still had meaning around them had to surrender.

They held each other, and kissed each other, as only lovers can, so that, even when they fumbled, it was as much a caress as anything else. They held and explored each other and, breathing in the warmth of skin between them, Linda knew that something had changed. At first, it frightened her, and it jabbed into her with the guilt of seeing Robert's face again, so loving and attentive. But then she was kissing David, his fingertips against her chin, and she allowed all of her thoughts to simply be. Guilt. Fear. Lust. Relief. Love. Everything passed through her, as clear and distant as the shooting star David had commanded down.

Let it burst to pieces. Let it pass.

When they awoke, David's arm was looped casually across her hips, his knees within the space created by the arch of her back and thighs. She took up his hand and brought it up to her lips.

"I should return home," she said, a sense of wonder colouring her words.

He stirred against her. "That doesn't sound very convincing."

"It doesn't, does it? It should. I know it should." She frowned. She waited for guilt to crowd around her head, the ten ton heavy devastation of it. A few doubts fluttered about her heart, inconsequential as spider webs, before they fell away. "I should return," she said, almost laughing at the sound of her words, "but I don't want to."

"Stay," he said. His voice came to her as a whisper, the slow brush of fingertips against her mind. "Time has no meaning here. You can return to 20 August whenever you feel like it. If you wish it, we could have forever. Such a short, senseless time, forever." His hand came to rest against her cheek, a gentle, almost pleading gesture. "Stay."

"What is your name?" She turned to face him. "What is your real name?"

He gazed at nothing for a moment, eyes downcast as he seemed to contemplate the way her hair caught between the curve of her jaw and her shoulder. He took up a lock of her hair, twirled it.

My God. He was shy. He was actually being shy.

"You're amazing," she said, frowning even as the absurdity of it made her smile.

"I know," he said. He coughed. "Jareth."

Jareth. She squinted at him. Without his clothes, and with his hair hanging over his eyes, he could very well not be or ever have been David Weddell. She suspected David Weddell would only ever be that hideous, neon coloured sweater. Jareth. It rolled on the tongue easier than David, almost. She said it out loud, "Jareth." She said it a second and third time, then kissed him. "Jareth." She drew her lips to the side in a jaunty grin. "Are we going to move in together?"

"Is that what she wishes?"

He pushed himself up on his elbows. He raised his right arm and began to pull his finger across the empty air. He hummed as he did it, his finger flicking this way and that, like a fine brush over a canvas. "Hold out your palm," he said. He coaxed at the empty air, and Linda could only stare with an uncertain smile hovering on her lips as he pretended to shepherd nothing onto her palm. Only she _could_ feel something, now that she thought about it. Shards. Microscopic shards, like very fine sand.

"Dum dee dum dum," Jareth hummed under his breath. He continued drawing in the air, stopping only to instruct Linda to use both her palms now, please. "House, house," he sang softly. "Little house. Little windows. Two, no, three, no, two. Yes. Two windows, dum dee dum." He waved his finger in a flourish along the centre of the empty space that was swirling shards. "And a door. A door, and—" He paused, tilted his head in thought. "And a porch?"

"Yes, please."

"And a porch," he sang. "Linda wants a porch."

At last, he took Linda's hands up between his own, coming up behind her so that his face was close to hers. He moved carefully, as if Linda's palms cupped water that could spill with any sudden movement.

"Where do you wish your house to be?" he said.

"The hill," she whispered. He smiled at that.

"Watch," he whispered back, a brief caress of lips against her earlobe. He guided her hands so that their edges seemed to rest on top of the hill. "Watch closely."

A shape began to form between Linda's hands, the suggestion of the drawing of a house, drawn in coal so that tiny bits of dust fell from it. The coal drawing became more solid, then darker, heavier. After a while, lights came on at the window overlooking the tiny porch and the bay window on the left side. The gentle prod of fingertips came once more against Linda's mind, and the house darkened again. The roof slanted upwards in Tudor fashion.

"Now, we take your hands away," Jareth pulled them slowly apart, "and we're done."

In the distance, crowning a hill, stood a house.


	3. Act III

**Act III**

Their house sat on top of a hill, crowning the swaying fields of grass that Jareth called The Wastes. They walked the empty rooms and Jareth asked Linda what she wanted inside her house. Missionary tables, faded, chipped white paint on the china cabinet, cupboards filled with tin jars and earthenware jugs, sprigs of dried wildflowers tied to the rafters above. White, lace curtains, window sills wide enough to sit and read on, a library panelled in dark wood, the bedroom as if the clock had never moved into 1900.

"I always wanted to live in the 1890s," Linda said. She seemed apologetic about it, wringing her hands even as she stood in her white, calico Promenade dress, with puffed sleeves and a wide skirt. Jareth showed her a closet full of many such dresses, for dinner and afternoon tea and balls, walking in the park, boating, cycling. "They really did have a dress for every occasion," she remarked. She tied an apron over the plain, dark green day dress she chose in the end.

"I quite hold with frequent costume changes," Jareth said. "It fascinates me in the theatre, and I see no reason for it not to spill into everyday life."

As if to prove this point, he had no less than five changes of clothes as they decorated the house. He did the kitchen in a mustard yellow frock coat, decided on bed linen in a silk dressing gown with Japanese peonies flowering down his sleeves, and hung pictures all along the length of the entry hall in a bright red jumpsuit. Linda followed behind in her green day dress and offered criticism like a Vogue correspondent, "No, no, dear, reds are very last season. The colours of 1977 are brown and orange, because we say so, darling." He obliged, and sauntered into the bathroom in brown corduroys and an orange shirt dotted with tiny yellow flowers.

Days began to pass.

At first, they barely left the house. There was always something to decorate, to tweak and improve. Every little thing Linda had ever wanted in a home, she could have, at any time. If the delicate Tiffany windows began to bore her, they could and did become perfect ovals. She clapped in delight, a little girl suspended within a never-ending Christmas. If she yearned for the house to feel hundreds of years old, it would, a Tudor mansion draped in ancestry and moth-eaten tapestries. If she woke feeling a yen for the spotlessly clean and Modern, Jareth greeted her in a wide, sterile white kitchen, dressed in something silvery and synthetic. After a while, these thrills began to wane, and the house settled into a more subdued, 19th century feel. A quaint, English cottage, as Jareth liked to say, not without a great deal of irony, for his American girl.

They made love often in those days, passionately, needing nothing but each other for days on end. Everything was understood as a good excuse to kiss, or to stand closer together than necessary after breakfast. They lost hundreds of hours to sated sleep, nestled into one another, watching as creamy sunlight dipped their bedroom into a honeyed calm. Their heads swam in fuzzy drowsiness, their limbs tingling, but they had nowhere to go, and nowhere they wanted to go.

Still, "I want to go out," Linda said one morning. "Are we the only people in The Labyrinth?"

"Hardly." Jareth buttoned up a smart evening jacket, checking his silk, jacquard tie was properly tucked into his vest. "The place is literally crawling with thousands of denizens. But I know of a few places that might please you."

They were the perfect lord and lady, husband and wife, walking arm in arm into grand hotels and opulent houses. He in a black tailcoat and top hat, she in a silk chiffon evening gown with a scooped neck and a long, wide skirt that rustled spectacularly as she walked. She wore white for a long while, a striking, aristocratic contrast of dark, dark hair piled into an elaborate knot and porcelain skin, sitting demure and delicate as she indulged in a fantasy of fine dinner parties and elegant coteries.

"Are they real?" she murmured to Jareth. A spike of warm desire still ran through her whenever they spoke in low voices to one another.

"The people?" He popped a bon bon into his mouth, chewed thoroughly, looking about him as if he were judging an art exhibition. "Yes, they're real. I'm not sure where they're from, though. They come and go through dimensions, you see. They're not always here, so it's always a good thing if you can catch them." He led her out into the dance floor as the band took their places once more, violins and flutes at the ready. "Tell me, do you like the 18th century as well?"

That was their next phase. They decked out in wide gowns and flared coats and brocaded slippers, lace at their throats and against their wrists, laughter following them as they raced down wide staircases into darkened alleys, looking for secret, masked balls. Linda wore cream, Jareth in powder blue. They danced on tip-toe and drank glass after glass of sparkling wine and lost each other several times in the motley crowd, so that Linda found herself apologizing to a man in a horned, brown leather mask before realizing it was Jareth in yet another costume change.

They sneaked into shadowed corners and did not altogether proper things, giggling like naughty teenagers at the thought that anyone could catch them at it.

Party followed party. They had thousands of years, hundreds of decades to try. Linda could not fathom that so much clothes could exist, that so much food could be wasted, trampled under foot, or that so many people could cram themselves in a dampening crush of sweat and rumpled velvet, the acrid bite of alcohol spilled down brocaded dresses and the merciless onslaught of thousands of perfumes mixed with flesh pushing into their noses. She never tired. Jareth was right. Time had no meaning where they were. They ate because they wanted to, and never felt hungry if they forgot. They only slept if they wanted to lie quietly in each other's arms, Linda running one silk stockinged leg down Jareth's thighs, flicking her ankle in little circles to admire how tiny her feet looked. Then it was back out into the party, out into a ballroom or a plantation or a Disco floor or some flat in Chelsea.

"I never got to do this," Linda said, tottering in Go Go platform boots, pulling at her mini skirt.

Jareth smoked like the factories in a Dickens story. "I'll speak to the band. I'll sing a song for you."

Seeing him on stage, swaying as he sang jazzy baritone, microphone stand dipped sideways so he could throw her a wink, the collar of his white shirt hopelessly crumpled under sweat and too much dancing, something stirred within her. A half-forgotten memory. Something that had given her great pleasure once.

"Jareth," she said that night, "I wish to act again. Can you find a theatre company?"

"Just tell me which time period, love."

A wide smile broke over her face. Forever. She only had forever. "All of them," she breathed, pale fingertips up against her lips. "All of them."

* * *

Pam turned the word failure over in his mind. It was a word that—distressingly enough—came up often in his line of work. To his mind, kings and queens existed merely in order to deal with failure. Things either failed somewhat, and could be fixed (in order to fail in a different guise), or they failed spectacularly and one corner of The Labyrinth would find itself at war with another corner. These wars were often failures as well, as nearly half the army—including the captains and generals and colonels—forgot why they were fighting to begin with, or even that they were fighting at all, and would wander off to lunch, never to return.

"That's how the Siege of the Crumpled Napkin ended," Pam said, mostly to himself. He very much doubted anyone could hear him over the din currently bouncing and echoing off the castle walls.

The king wanted The Labyrinth shifted to Londonderry, New Hampshire. As a command, it was pretty simple and straightforward. As an enterprise, it required the acquisition, assembly, maintenance and operation of several pieces of machinery, one for each cardinal point, with smaller machines for the cardinal points in between. At last check, the machines for South and East had been assembled, and goblin engineers were crawling about inside, smeared in oil, checking that they had been properly re-constructed. The machine for West was lying in pieces within its tower, four engineers standing about, talking in low grumbles, as one lonely goblin apprentice puzzled over the assembly plans. Nobody knew where the machine for North was.

"Get Maintenance Detail in here," Pam said to a messenger. He ignored the way the messenger saluted. "And inform the engineers at the Southwest junction that their machine needs to be moved thirty paces to the left."

Cries came from below, voices distorted as if within a cellar. "MOVE the _blinkin_' think t'the _soddin_' LEFT!" This was followed by a squeaky, "Nin's left, or Wugg's left?" A long string of abuse thundered out, and Pam nearly lost his footing as the machine heaved first to the right, then left, rumbled right, left once more, then, with a decisive, ear-splitting metal scratch, right. Pam threw open a trap door at the corner of a ballroom.

"No, no, you are to move the machine to the left! The _left_. You are shifting us to the right, and I, for one, have no wish to tell his majesty why we are moving The Labyrinth towards Târgu Mureş. Please proceed to move us to the _left_."

After several, needlessly confused minutes in which the ballroom lurched with a crack of stone and the pelting of debris, it was finally decided that a goblin named Skanka would be deemed the point the machine should be aligned to. Skanka waved cheerfully inside a protective copper pot as Nin and Wugg dragged the machine its thirty paces to the left. A piece clattered off, and more abuse thundered out at the engineers as Pam climbed back up to the ballroom.

"Fine mess you got here," grunted a deep, age crusted voice. A dwarf in a red cap and dusty overalls took a long drag from his cigar, bushy eyebrows like rain clouds over the plains.

Pam brushed dust off his black suit. He straightened out his starched lace ruff and said, "Ah, Hoggle. So the Maintenance Detail is here at last." He pointed down at the Southwest machine, wobbling on its feet. "Please be so kind as to salvage that machine."

"It's true, then? He's shifting The Labyrinth?"

"He is. It is his majesty's prerogative to do as he so wills and wishes. And it is our prerogative to obey."

Hoggle slid down the ladder that lead to the machine. He dropped down in a cloud of rust and dirt. "Yeah yeah," he grunted. "Just keep him out of my sight. I'll do my job, and he can flounce about doing his." He pulled a bag of tools that hung against his back down toward his chest. "Where _is_ his nibs, anyhow? Keeping clear of this debacle, least his fancy boots get smudged?"

"His majesty is otherwise occupied at the moment." Pam tocked his beak. "As I understand it, he is at The Wastes. He has left strict instructions not to be disturbed."

"The Wastes, huh?" Hoggle selected a wrench from his tool bag. He spit at it, then polished it against his sleeve. "I'll never understand his obsession with them. Can't leave well enough alone, that one." He reached up and slammed the ballroom's trap door shut. Pam heard his voice one last time, grumbling, "Curse that stupid Jareth, getting us to shift the whole damn place."

The dwarf was not exactly the only one who felt that way. Truth be told, Pam was none too pleased with the enterprise himself. But it was his majesty's wish, and serving his majesty was the job of the Advisor Royal.

"Well, no," Pam mused. "Is it not also my job to advise him against this?"

"Is it?" said a cheerful voice behind him. "You can, you know. I'm sure it would be stupendously long and formal, and I'd love to hear it. I'd disregard your advice completely, you understand, but I _would_ listen."

"Your majesty." Pam bowed, doing an impeccable job at hiding his alarmed surprise. "You are—" He paused. He blinked at his king, then straightened, fingers steepled like a very elegant judge. "Your majesty is carrying a chicken."

Jareth jogged a spotted, black and white French hen under his left arm. "Cecile, yes. Cecile was nearly run over by some goblins pulling a frightfully decrepit something down the hall. Looked rather like a Gatling gun. Awful lot of rust on it. And they dropped this." He held up a bent cog. "They'll need it, I'm sure. Get it to them." He tossed the cog at Pam—who performed an interesting, stick limbed little jig in his attempts to catch it—then sailed into his throne room as if on his way to a grand coronation with Cecile clucking under his arm.

He placed her gently on the throne, where she proceeded to preen and pluck at her feathers, as if she were not surrounded by the reverberating, put-off orders and replies of engineers and the iron bellows of neglected machinery. Jareth walked over to a trap door a few feet away from the centre of the room, threw it open with the tip of his foot, and peered down. Empty. He frowned.

"Where is the Northern Machine?" he said.

"Currently missing, your majesty."

"Ah."

"A team is hard at work as we speak, your highness, searching for it."

"That might take a while. A good, long while." Jareth pulled a corsair coat from the air behind him, shrugged it on. "I might just go visit dear Baby Blob," he said. "Check on his progress."

Pam made as if to say something, changed his mind. The gesture did not escape Jareth's notice.

"Still human then," he said, his voice low and displeased. "I am impressed, George, darling Sandra." With that, he disappeared.

At her place on the throne, Cecile clucked and flapped her wings.

* * *

Linda sat, gazing at the slow, drifting clouds like bits of candy floss beyond the window, within her house on the hill. She did not often get to just sit and gaze at the world float by. Her life was a busy one: plays, parties, luncheons with theatre critics and actors, directors, dancers, and other artistic types. She read and memorized scripts at night, in bed, while the man she loved (was he her husband?) (she had gotten married, once, hadn't she?) slept beside her. His arm would rise occasionally, searching her out, with a child's need for trust and comfort. His arm would rest lightly across her hips as she read and he slept on.

She was successful. Very successful. In every time period, in any language, she was hailed as a tour de force, a true, passionate actress. Even harsh, critical reviews made an exception for the quality of her performance and hers alone. Riding home one night in a hansom cab, Art Nouveau posters of her latest play, Wilde's _Salome_, followed her, dark, stylized locks framing her youthful, delicate face as she held up the silver platter with the severed head of John the Baptist.

"Are you happy, love?" Jareth asked.

"I am. I am very happy."

And she was. She could not remember ever having been this happy. Steady work. A man who worshipped her. Her dream country cottage amidst grass that only wilted to Autumn brass or was covered in Winter snow if she wished it.

Everything in her life was as she wished it.

Sometimes, little things would make her wonder. A jug of sauce, the illustrations in a book, of two lovers sharing a drink at a soda fountain, a name. She thumbed through a copy of _Men and Women_ at a local bookshoppe, and her thumb chased back and forth over Robert Browning. Robert, Robert. She had known a Robert. Hadn't she? Whenever she tried to picture him, all she could think of was the word "curls," like some installation at an art gallery. Big, Freon letters spelling out R-O-B-E-R-T-C-U-R-L-S. Jareth would gaze at the letters, hands clasped behind his back, murmur, "Fascinating," and move on to the next art piece. Maybe that _was_ where she had heard the name. Anyway, it wasn't important.

On the day she forgot Robert's name completely, a beautiful garden appeared at the front of her cottage.

Yet other things pulled at the dark corners of her mind, the kind that filtered through fuzzy and sleepy, and would only rear their heads when Jareth was not beside her. Time, for example. Today was 19 August 1898. But, sometimes, she could have sworn she had already lived 19 August 1898. She had been at a dinner party with friends of Jareth, the couple who choreographed dances for her plays. How could she forget? Jareth had made a point of attending, because his friends were homosexuals and attending would send a clear message of how bohemian, how avant-garde and open minded he and Linda were. And she was sure it had been 19 August.

Something else. Linda had met a lot of people, theatrefuls of them. They talked about her plays or the weather or holidays to Madrid, but nobody ever spoke of their children. Linda could not remember seeing a single pram at the park, no nannies leading children by the hand, no pregnant women or children's clothes at the stores.

She wondered at how she had never become pregnant herself.

And yet she remembered pregnancy like a weight that had pushed right down into swollen feet. She remembered a little girl. Clara, Susan, something like that. She often thought that little girl might have been her daughter.

"Do you like children?" she asked Jareth over breakfast.

He spread marmalade on warm toast, a pat of butter trailing out melted starfish arms at its centre. "They're all right, I suppose."

"Would you… be adverse… to having any?"

"Adverse?" He bit into his toast. "Not particularly. But we're so busy all the time, you with your plays, me at the vaudeville, that it would be cruel to bring a child into this world. We would hardly see the little bundle of joy. Why bring a child into the world just so a nanny can take our place in its heart?"

"Oh, well, it wouldn't have to be that way."

"But it would be, love. I've seen it countless of times." Had he? she thought. Strange, what with no one they knew having children. "I'm not opposed to it, though," he said with a smile. "In a few years time, perhaps. When our lives settle a bit, and we can be attentive, responsible parents."

Only their lives never settled down.

Linda came down to breakfast one morning, stifling a yawn after a night broken by the constant roll of thunder outside (something Linda loved), to find Jareth in a black dressing gown, toast and bacon and tea ready for them on a tray, a letter in his hands.

"Marvellous news," he said. "You've been offered the part."

Linda's heart fluttered. She would have preferred for him not to have opened her letter, but the part, the part. "Medea? I've gotten Medea?"

Jareth nodded, proud and happy. "19 August, love," he said, "in this year of our oh so loving Lord 1754."

Linda rushed to him in a patter of slippers and hugged him and buried his face under kisses. "This is wonderful," she said, kissing his temple breathlessly. "And I love you." She kissed his lips. "And I'll never forget this day for as long as I live!"

* * *

Sarah sat on the stoop at the front of their house, chin on her knees. She still wore her white, Princess dress, but she had pulled off the plastic tiara. It lay on its side behind her, gemstones glinting in the dim light of the lamp post across the street. Her head lifted at the incoming glare of every headlight, only to drop in disappointment as every car simply drove on.

"Honey," Robert called from the door, "come inside. It's getting cold." She remained as she was. "Sarah, sweetie, please. She'll be home soon. You have nothing to worry about, I promise."

"She missed dinner. She never misses dinner."

No, she didn't. And she was very good about calling when she would. But Robert said, "She's likely out with friends. Lost track of time. Come inside, sweetie."

After a while, Sarah heaved herself up, then shuffled into the house. Robert walked out to retrieve her tiara.

At 9.00PM, Robert switched on the late night news. Images flickered on TV, ignored as both he and Sarah sat on the couch. It was a while before Robert realized—with a start—that Sarah should not be watching this. They were showing images of the victims of that New York nut job, Son of Sam, for God's sake. He got up and clacked the TV off. Sarah refused to go to bed. She wanted to stay up, to wait with him. It was unfair, that she had to go to bed while he stayed up. In the end, he made a bed of blankets on the den couch for her and allowed her to watch a video. The wood panelled, sliding doors to the den rattled closed on the whistling, happy children of _Sesame Street_.

Robert dialled Adrian from the Riverbed Theatre Company. "For emergencies only," Linda's handwriting said above the number. Robert dearly hoped he was about to be told off or laughed at.

"Yes?" came Adrian's voice. Television voices could be heard in the foreground, some thriller with tough talking, hard-boiled cops. "Hello? This is Adrian speaking. Hello?"

"Um, uh, good evening, um, Adrian." He cleared his throat. "Listen, have you seen Linda?"

"I saw her at rehearsal."

"Did it run late or… or something? Did you guys all go out to dinner?"

"No. Nothing ever runs late when I'm in charge." A pause. Robert could almost see him turning his head, keeping an eye on the TV.

"Did she, I dunno, did she go out with any of the other actors?"

"Linda has coffee with Weddell after rehearsals. I'm pretty sure they did the same today."

Weddell. The new guy. Sweet and jumpy English guy. "Do you have his number?"

"Look, I don't think I should—"

"Please. My daughter is worried. It's nearly ten at night. I'd like to be able to reassure her that her mommy is okay."

A short, doubtful pause. Then, "All right. Hang on." The speaker clattered onto a hard surface. The voices on the TV morphed from manly rumbles to loud, Hollywood shots and the squeal of high-speed car chase wheels. With a rustle of static, Adrian came back on the phone. His voice was apologetic. "Oh, look, I'm sorry. I could've sworn I got everyone to write down their numbers for me, but Weddell isn't on the list." A piece of spiral notebook paper crackled. "Now I know I need to get his number again. But I'm sorry that I can't help," he added quickly. "Okay? Is there anything else I can do?"

"No. I mean, yeah. Call if Linda calls you."

In the den, Sarah had fallen asleep to Kermit the Frog singing the alphabet. Not wanting to wake her, Robert let the tape play on. He sat on the armchair and stared at nothing as the credits rolled, immobile as the tape segued into static. He did not remember falling asleep. When he woke, with a jerk of his knee, the static was still on the TV screen. The digital face on the VCR flashed out a neon green 12:45.

No Linda.

No Linda next morning, as Robert sleepwalked through making sure Sarah had breakfast. She protested and screamed all the way to the bus stop.

"I can't go to school! I CAN'T! I've gotta wait for mommy! Daddy! I can't GO!"

The other parents at the bus stop stared, children giggling. Robert knelt down and cupped Sarah's face between his hands. "Hey," he said gently, then with more force as Sarah began to moan out a tantrum, "Hey! Look at me, Sarah. Look at me. Not here, okay? I want you to be calm for me, okay? I need you to go to school and not worry, and when you come home mommy and daddy will both be there. All right? Sport?"

She sniffled, her face red and splotchy. "Mommy," she began.

"Is all right. She is an adult, and she can take care of herself. Now, I need you to get on the bus for me, all right?"

He called her school that afternoon from work, to make sure that she was still there. It did not occur to him to worry about whether he sounded paranoid. All he wanted was for it to be 5.00PM. He stared at his phone, willing it to ring, "I'm so sorry, Robert." Did she spend the night with Weddell? At Weddell's? Was she still there? Ring, you goddamn phone. But it never did. He drove home fretting that if she called, he would not be able to answer. Cooking was out of the question. He pulled out Sarah's Rice Krispies and poured himself a bowl.

And waited.

The doorbell rang at 6.52 PM.

He tore open the door. "Oh, my—"

A woman in a blue tracksuit glared at him. Sobbing quietly, Sarah held onto her hand. Oh my God. My God. Robert stood in a shattered huddle, the biggest jerk in the world.

"Oh, honey," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."

"Hopefully, this will not happen again, Mr Williams," the woman snapped. She bent down to hug Sarah. "There now, honey. You're safe. You're home. And your daddy's here." She drove off in a self-righteous crunch of gravel.

Robert stood by the door, a lump of a man as Sarah raced into the house. "Mommy?!"

Linda did not come home that night.

Linda did not come home the next day.

The policeman at the station gave him a sober, disapproving look. "Sir, these things should always be reported as soon as possible."

"I didn't think…" Robert mumbled tonelessly. "We hoped that…"

"When did you last see your wife?" A police officer clicked a ballpoint pen, flipped open a notepad.

Robert could hear George in his head. My son is gone. He could hear himself in his head, talking to Linda. That boy's as good as dead. These fucked up things always happen to the decent guys. He wanted to sob. Instead, he heard his voice say, "I last saw my wife at around 7.30AM on the 21st of August."


	4. Act IV

**Notes: **I just wanna say that Pam is starting to sound a great deal like Abe Sapien to me at this point, from the _Hellboy _movies (adapatations) by Guillermo del Toro. Any _Hellboy _fans? And doesn't Abe just rule?

But enough of that.

* * *

**Act IV**

Mayte Orozco was pretty sure her family thought of her as a failure. In the Dominican Republic, she could have been a high school teacher, clambered up the ranks to become principal, a superintendent for an entire school district. She had the brains and the talent and the degree from the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra in Santiago de los Caballeros. Instead, she was bussing tables at Porter's Diner in White Toast Londonderry, New Hampshire, USA.

"_Mija_," her mother said over the phone, dragging the J. "Why you wanna serve coffee to those _gringos_? You come home to Santiago, do better for yourself."

"I'm happy, _mami_," she said. She turned the knob on her portable radio. Led Zeppelin thought she needed cooling, but what she really wanted was some good, solid Disco. A bass thump and grooving hand claps came in at 96.5 FM, and she settled back. "It's only for a few years, maybe less, and I'll be back at Santiago. You'll see." Her mother made a disbelieving noise in the back of her throat, and Mayte blew her a kiss. "_Bendición_, _mami_."

_Bendición_. I send you my blessings. Like some priest, always blessing her mother over the phone. On good days, it made Mayte laugh.

She liked having good days. For the most part, she had plenty of them. And then, on 17 August, Bill had said, "You got table 4, Mayte." He pronounced it May-T. Mayte had long ago given up on correcting him, or anybody else, for that matter. Too much hassle. She preferred to avoid hassles. And she liked table 4. At around 5.30PM that could only mean Linda, _La Nena Linda_.

"What does it mean?" Linda had asked after the second time Mayte had used the nickname. "You say my name twice."

"Linda means pretty in Spanish," she said. "And Linda is very pretty. _Mija_, I'd kill for hair like yours."

Linda fingered her hair and smiled in a shy, yet delighted way. She left a good tip. She always left a good tip. Mayte liked that a great deal. And she liked Linda. So when Bill pointed her towards table 4, Mayte weaved over with her usual smile, ready to pretend that she did not know Linda would order a salad with vinaigrette dressing on the side.

A man sat with Linda. He was gazing around him like a child at his first carnival. One blue eye, one muddied, damaged left eye. Mayte saw him and the air around her liquefied, heavy strands like water slowing her steps. She did not know him, could not place him, but she knew the aura coming from him, like thick tendrils of grass ensnaring her legs along a riverbank. She had not felt an aura like that in nearly sixty years. She had left all that behind, had clambered up to the world above and good riddance to all the pointless madness behind her.

And now someone from that world was here, at Porter's, across from Linda.

He did not pick up anything from Mayte, or, at the very least, he pretended not to. Outright cavalier, truth be told. He let his aura pulse and ripple all over the diner, so that Linda sat with her eyes locked on him, a dreamy smile at the corners of her lips. He conjured milkshakes and extra helpings of fries for her with the bald-faced audacity of someone so secure in his power that he does not give one damn for who (or what) might be picking up on the waves and echoes of his magic.

"I feel funny," Bill said the next day. "Does anybody else feel funny? Maybe we got a bad batch of coffee." He dug into his temples with his thumbs as he headed into the kitchen. "God, my head is killing me."

As well it should. The man with the mismatched eyes kept winding back time, so that 17 and 18 August kept coming and going like tennis balls. Most people did not notice. They put it down to confusion or lack of sleep. "Oh thank God," most murmured as Mayte handed them their coffee, staring at the date on their newspapers or the tear-away Betty Boop calendar above the pie display, "I really thought I'd missed a deadline." The man did it a brain mulching fifteen times (Bill looked ready to hurl by the seventh time it happened), before he decided to let the week unfurl as usual once more.

On 19 August, Porter's lurched sideways violently within Mayte, and Linda and the man were no longer at their booth. When she ran to check for a record of their order, there was nothing. Table 4 was marked as having been empty since 2.00 PM. Mayte bit her lip, looking at the empty table, and tried not to worry about Linda. She was very relieved when Linda walked in, followed, as always, by the man, on 21 August.

"The usual?" Mayte said. "For both of you?"

Linda nodded with a dazed look in her eyes. She kept clasping and unclasping her hands under the table. Mayte saw her gaze at a B&W picture of a little girl at the beach, brows hovering in a half-frown. The man had a fond, secretive smile stamped on his face.

Mayte had not finished turning away to hand Bill their order when Porter's lurched within her for a second time, with such violence that Mayte was knocked sideways. An old man in ripped blue overalls helped her up. Through the triangle formed by his elbows, Mayte could see that table 4 was empty.

Now, she sat in her one-room apartment, an R&B ballad playing softly on the radio, reading and re-reading a few sentences on a B&W police flyer.

MISSING Since August 21, 1977. Name: Linda Williams. Last seen near Porter's Diner at 5.30 PM.

Not good. Bad juju. Very bad juju.

Mayte clambered across her bed on her knees. She took up a cheap, plaster statue of San Antonio de Padua. She plunked it down on the floor and lit a small, white votive candle. She gazed at the flame for a while, feeling as if her skin were trying to crawl right off her muscles, before she took a deep breath. She loved her mother, Doña Orozco, very much. She had, perhaps, not loved the Dominican Republic as much as she should have, but it had been an okay place, all things considered. At least she had not chosen some place like Iran or Chile, where she would have been liable to get blown up or raped or both. And she had managed not to get herself deported from good ole'USA. Most important of all, she had kept under (above, she thought with a wry grin) The Labyrinth's radar for a good fifty-three years. It had been a good run, and she was not looking forward to what she was compelled to do now.

But, damn it, she liked Linda. She deserved a warning, at least.

Mayte took a deep, deep breath. She inhaled and ingested the flame of her candle, and then said, "I summon the Singer of Spells."

A sound like thousands of tiny pebbles rushing toward the centre of her room, and her statue of San Antonio de Padua glowed a faint, pulsing white, like morning sunlight on snow. A voice like a mother's caress nestled within Mayte's mind. It took Mayte by surprise that the feel of that voice made her sigh in relief, like a child who has feared herself lost and is found again.

"What does she wish?" the voice murmured.

"I wish to help Linda Williams. She has been unlawfully taken within The Labyrinth."

"The woman Linda Williams did not wish it?"

"No. I saw it. A creature from The Labyrinth took her. I saw the _pendejo_ with my own eyes. Jerk's borrowed a human form, same as me, but I'd know those auras anywhere." Mayte frowned. "Whoever, whatever he is, he's broken the law. He took without the correct words having been spoken."

The light died down a bit, as if the Singer were considering Mayte's words. After a while, San Antonio flared up once more. "She may not have the authority to help Linda Williams." The Singer must have felt Mayte's disappointment, because it added, in a soothing, spring water voice, "However, she may be placed in contact with ones who have just cause—within the rules—to enter The Labyrinth. She may find that, in aiding them, she may aid Linda Williams."

"Super," Mayte grinned. "What've I gotta do?"

"She may go to Kent, England."

Mayte pulled a face. "The wet, stuffy place?"

"She may not go to Kent, England, if she so wishes."

Tricky Singers. It was enough to make Mayte think that she could detect a trace of sarcasm in its voice, gentle and whispery and ethereal as it was. She thanked it as was proper, and her little San Antonio de Padua reverted back to a simple plaster statue. She packed it into a duffel bag with a large Dominican flag on the flap, along with a whole, rattling slew of fresh votives. Then she stood at the centre of her room and pondered her options: Airplane, or air, plain and simple. Airplanes took time and a great deal of money, and they gave Mayte the willies, hovering there between more than one reality, possible dimensions prodding her like some lout at a bar. Not that air was any better. She would have to change in order to travel through air, not so plain and simple after all.

Time, a voice that sounded a great deal like Doña Orozco, is many miles ahead of you, _mija_, and blowing up your options as it goes.

"Oh, fuckity fuck fuck," she muttered.

Then, she reached up to grasp the flesh below her eyes. She had not quite decided whether wincing made these things hurt more or not before she simply ripped at her skin and then whether it would hurt or not was immaterial because it hurt like fire ants chomping down every inch of her.

* * *

With a crash like several houses crumbling down, a group of five goblin engineers lowered the machine for North down into its place below the throne room. They paid little attention to Pam's distressed calls of, "Careful, careful!" and they certainly did not give a dead possum's stiff behind for his wails of, "Gently! For the love of my dear mother, _gently_!"

Hoggle was already below the throne room, every wrinkle and fold on his face etched out in soot and oil and several layers of clay coloured dirt. He transferred his cigar from behind his ear and back into his mouth, and dove into the lengthy task of making sure the machine had all of its parts, and that those parts were bolted down securely. A gaggle of excitable, trainee engineers kept bouncing and clambering all over him and the machine.

"Wot next? This next? Wot next, eh?"

"Get off!" Hoggle growled. "You stupid goblins, you're supposed to screw those _down_, not screw them _off_!" He swatted a small, round goblin away from his line of sight, kicked a few more for good measure.

"Jest tryin' t'help!" they protested in high-pitched voices. One of them showed his displeasure by biting into Hoggle's ankle.

Hoggle grabbed it by the scruff of its neck and propelled it up into the throne room.

It ricocheted off the ceiling and landed with an altogether overjoyed, "Who-hoa!" into what felt like a bony hoop covered in fabric. The bony hoop shifted and became a pair of arms in elbow-length velour gloves.

Jareth allowed the goblin to clamber up onto his right shoulder as he leaned over to glance into the bowels of his throne room. What he saw made him pull his lips to the side in amused distaste. "Well if it isn't dear Wattle," he said. "Who else would go about kicking my goblins?" He pretended not to hear Hoggle's protests about his name. Tiresome, that. "Every other cardinal point in the castle has its machine ready to go, Hockle, why am I still waiting for the Northern Machine?"

Because your precious goblins can't even remember where they put a wrench seconds after setting it down. "I'm on it!" he rumbled out instead. "Let me do my job! Ain't you got other, more important things to do?"

"Not until _you_ finish," Jareth said, knocking the trap door above Hoggle's head closed with the back of his foot.

Pam hopped over two goblins dragging a length of pipe in order to reach Jareth's side. "Your majesty," he said with a slight pant, "the Singers have chosen."

Jareth gave him a blank look. He shooed off the goblin on his shoulder, snapped the fingers of both his hands as he motioned for another goblin to stop pulling feathers out of Cecile and pass her to him instead. He stroked her back, murmuring kisses into her fleshy crest as she heaved a long, low, nearly unbroken cluck of displeasure, before he gave Pam a second blank look, even vaguer than the first.

"The Singers, your majesty," Pam said politely, "have chosen a position for the portal from aboveground."

"Ah." He yawned, and he stood, with Cecile under one arm and Pam—stiff and wide eyed—beside him, in the sloping, impeccably manicured lawn of a public park at the outskirts of a Londonderry suburb. Jareth tossed the park an unimpressed glance. "They're getting lazy, those Singers. I much preferred the alley in Kent. It had… personality. This is so," he favoured a beautiful, dew kissed yellow rose with a disdainful look, "pretty."

Pam coughed. Never-been-aboveground-never-been-aboveground his heart thundered, a locomotive this close to veering off its tracks. In a measured voice, aided considerably by running one trembling hand down to the silk bow at the nape of his neck, he said, "But most useful, sire. Observe its many pathways, shadowed corners, and gnarled, somewhat ancient tress (as humans measure these things), your highness. Would they not offer ample opportunity for—"

"Brats get lost in parks all the time!" Jareth cried in delight.

"—for, well, for that very same occurrence." Pam bowed with a flourish of long, feathered arms. "Your majesty is truly wise."

"Brilliant," Jareth said. He blew both Cecile's and Pam's minds by yanking them back to the throne room in the space between half a millisecond. He tossed Cecile into the air, where she squawked and made a great, flapping mess of spotted feathers out of clawing through empty space toward anything to perch on. "Make sure Hortence doesn't blow up the Northern Machine, Pam, and call upon me only once it's _finally _set up."

He leaped gracefully onto a window ledge, russet feathers fanning out behind him in a wide, translucent cape even before he had taken the shape of a barn owl. He screeched in pleasure, flapping great, mottled wings, then dove down and out of sight.

Pam pulled Cecile off the top of his head. "As you wish, your majesty," he said with grave decorum.

"And good riddance!" came Hoggle's voice from below his feet.

* * *

George was dreaming. He knew that well enough by now. Black skies spread out above him, strangely flat and unreal, as if someone had merely stretched a photocopy of a black page from one horizon to the other. The sand below his feet was no longer green but hot pink, and it had the lazy, wide strokes quality of somebody colouring in a B&W photo badly on purpose.

"I thought you didn't like the Punks," George said. He knew David was behind him. "You said you wanted to do somethin' jazzy instead, that Punks 'ad misused their energies in repetitive, three-chord melodies."

"I sound so elitist," David remarked.

"You could be."

He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at David, carefully, critically, as if looking for faults in a work of art everybody else gushed about needlessly. David stood still, then turned slowly, as if to give George the full picture.

"Damn you," George said. "Wot's goin' on?"

"You're dreaming," David said, an edge to his voice. He began to pace. "And as such, I cannot fully control what happens. This is not my dimension."

"You seem to be in control of the backdrop. Keep meetin' ye in this fuckin' ugly beach."

David gave a short, humourless laugh as he continued to pace. "Well, then, the joke's on you, because I'm as blameless for this beach as you are." He stopped and glared at George. "Curse you. I destroyed my memories of you. I ground them into powder. And yet I still found myself compelled to visit you in dreams. And now you've started to remember. I need you to _forget_."

"My son?"

"Everything! Forget _everything_, George. Forget about Joe and David Jones and all of it. Move out of Kent if that's what it takes. Divorce Sandra. I don't care. Just stop—" He halted his words with a struggle, teeth bared as something battled within his eyes. "Stop," he hissed, the knife of anger in his voice. He balled his hands into fists, slowly, the fingers of his hands like clawed talons. "I will not—God, just—STOP!"

He doubled over, panting.

George backed away.

"I dunno who you are, but I no longer think you're David Jones. I knew David Jones. I knew Davey. He disappeared, jest like my son. I didn't wonder about it then, but I think it's because somethin' keeps messin' with my 'ead, out there," he pointed up at the photocopy black sky, "where I'm awake and I can't remember things I remember clearly when I'm in 'ere."

David looked up from his half-slumped position. He looked so much like the Davey George had known—hopeful and open faced even as he looked as if he feared the world had tricked him somehow—that he nearly reached out to him. He checked himself with a curse.

"You came to my house, the night Joe disappeared. And I kept thinkin', somethin' ain't right 'ere. You had 'air down to yer shoulders one minute, short the next. And you were trailin' this…" He stared around him, as if he expected the right words to write themselves out on the sand. "This… stuff, like sand or—or glass. It was—"

"George, please. Forget about Joe. Forget about me." He straightened, looking tired. "If you forget, if you'll only forget, I promise you that everything will be all right. Things could be better. I could make them better."

"I've lost my son and my best friend," George scoffed. "How could you make things better?"

David reached into his coat pocket. He pulled out what looked like a marble. He held it up between three fingertips, like a jeweller appraising a cut diamond. "You have such little dreams, George," he said. George could not decide whether he sounded sad or merely observant. "But they are still yours. A moderately successful band, as a hobby, and a job designing record sleeves." The marble grew a bit. "Ah, perhaps not satisfied with such commonplace things after all."

He held out the sphere.

George made as if to take it, brows knotted in sceptical wonder. Before his hand closed over it, though, he frowned. He knocked the sphere out of David's hand. It rolled across the sand, where it grew transparent and inconsequential and finally disappeared.

"Think you're the devil, do ye? Think I'd trade my son an' my friend for a good job? Bollocks, mate. Bollocks."

David smiled. "I _do _love you, George," he said wistfully. "You're the one thing I truly missed. But I can't go on dreaming about you, or letting you see me."

He stepped closer to George. He raised one arm and placed his palm against George's cheek. He felt George start, try to pull back in alarm. David's other arm snapped up, closed around George's wrist, held him in place. He searched George's face, as if he could see beyond it, to a place within George not even he could reach. George struggled, found he could not break free.

"George?" David said, quietly, as if calling to a child. Then he leaned forward, head tilted, and kissed him.

As he drew back, George could see something wet and shining on his lips. More of the strange, shimmering substance coated David's fingertips and his palm as he drew his arms away from George's cheek and wrist. He took slow, careful steps away from George.

"Who am I?" he said, wiping his lips.

George opened his mouth to say, "Don't be a fool—" but then he realized that he well and truly did not know the man standing across from him. He blinked. "I—I've never met you in my life. _Should _I know you?"

The man shook his head no. "Did you ever have a son?"

"A son?" George screwed his eyes in thought. "No. No, I didn't. Sandra and I tried, but… Well, it never quite worked out."

"Look at me, George," the man said. He had quite striking eyes, different colours, quite brilliant. George found himself smiling. "Very good," the man said. "Now listen. I've exerted quite a lot of power here. This is not my realm, and working magic here is tricky. I'm doing the best I can, George. Do you understand?"

George nodded.

"Good. Now, wake up and don't throw all of this effort on my part to waste. You are George Underwood, you are married to a fine girl called Sandra. You have no children. And you are happy."

George nodded. "Well of course I am, mate."

He woke smiling, and turned to hug his beautiful wife. She pushed him away, and this puzzled him, but the dream had left him too happy for this to worry him for long.

* * *

Jareth appeared within his throne room in a gust of powdered glass and feathers that drifted from a mottled white into black. He walked to the trap door that led to the Northern Machine and threw it open with his mind.

"Hoggle," he said coldly. "I tire of Kent, and I tire of waiting. Is the machine ready?"

From his place at the machine's heart, Hoggle could only look up at Jareth at first. Jareth had not used his real name in a long, long time. Once, they might have been close, when Jareth had still been David Jones and had arrived at The Labyrinth like a little boy to an adult's party. But Jareth—once woken to consciousness once more—had done away with David, and Hoggle's despaired anger at the loss of David, whom he had been fond of, in his own way, had angered Jareth. And Jareth did not forgive a slight readily, if ever. His voice was as disdainful as ever now, hard and dispassionate, but something mingled with the edge of his words, something vulnerable and hurt, and it threw Hoggle completely.

"J-Jareth?" he said.

"I tire of this place, Hoggle. I wish to leave."

Behind Hoggle, the heart of the Northern Machine lurched. Heat spread along Hoggle's back and legs as he struggled to crawl out of the machine before it became fully operational. Steam hissed from exhaust pipes and from between gyrating, rattling joints and pivots.

"I wish," Jareth said in a terrible, dead voice, "for The Labyrinth to move to Londonderry, New Hampshire. I wish to leave Kent forever."

With one last hiss, the Northern Machine's heart flared to life. Searing red light pushed Hoggle against a wall and down to his knees. Steam and powdered glass buffeted his face. Shielding his eyes, already half closed from the heat and noise and steam, he groped for the exit ladder. He pulled himself onto the throne room floor, panting, gasping great gulps of air into his lungs. The entire castle groaned and rumbled beneath him, the force of it fit to shake his bones to dust. He could not think for the roar of stone in his head and within his very mind. It was as if the castle were dying and clawing at every life it could hold onto in its attempt to survive. Hoggle had never felt so much pain in his life, as if hundreds of shards were ripping him into bloody shreds from outside and within.

Through the haze in his mind, he thought he saw Jareth bend down and move him clear of the trap door, but that could not have been right. Jareth would not ever help Hoggle.

And Jareth never cried.

* * *

Standing outside her house on the hill, Linda saw a great cloud of ochre dust rise from the place Jareth had called The Labyrinth. It shot in a billowing, writhing mass to the sky, then spread as it came rolling towards the borders of The Labyrinth. It roiled and heaved like a living thing, a great lung expanding in a burst of faces and arms and legs and hooves and creatures crawling forward in a feeding frenzy. Ahead of it came a roar that grew into a din that reached such a magnitude that Linda could no longer hear anything.

Jareth. Where was Jareth?

She had to run into the house, close the door. She threw the bolt as the door slammed shut. She saw her right arm, long and pale, as she stumbled across the floor, skirts gathered in her left hand as she made her way towards shelter.

A table. There, by the couches. She dropped to her knees and crawled below it. Beyond her the light slanting in through the windows, already choked with colliding particles of dust and debris from her roof, dropped away, as if hands had pushed down against the eyes of her house.

Jareth, her mind panted. Jareth. Jareth.

In total silence, emptiness so complete it blanketed even her thoughts, Linda watched as the cloud crashed into the windows. She saw glass implode, felt something slam into her side and into her chest.

Sarah, she thought in a sad panic, I wanted to see Sarah one last time.

But the world had already dropped away, and with it her thoughts.


	5. Act V

**Notes: **The line, "fleas the size of rats," is from "Future Legend," the spoken introduction to David Bowie's "Diamond Dogs." And _tostones_, just in case anybody wonders, are plantains pounded flat and fried, and are a sort of Caribbean equivalent of getting fries with everything.

* * *

**Act V**

A rustle of voices came from behind closed doors. They sounded excited, expectant. Linda tried to peek from between the palms pressed to her eyes, but a voice said in her ear, "Uh uh, not yet."

"Jareth?" she said, nervousness giving way to a short, startled laugh.

"Not yet, love," he said from close behind her, a heavy, warm mass and a low voice. "Wait."

Footsteps, some kind of high heel click clack clicking over a hard surface. Marble? No, the echoes were deeper than that. Wood. The click clacks came to a stop. Coughs. The sigh and sliding whispers of gowns. A man cleared his throat. Then, like a French horn, "All rise!"

An upward pull of noise, the clarion high creak of the doors opening, and Jareth's voice, "Now," before he took his hands away and Linda's pupils drank in nothing but white. When colour returned, she found herself in a wide, mirrored room full of strange people reflected into the distance. Some were human, lords and ladies, dukes, countesses. Others resembled creatures from dreams or nightmares, with large, leathery ears or bright, bulging eyes, limbs like tree branches, gelatinous bodies, short, green skinned men as tall as children, ladies with the heads of dogs. Linda's fingers tightened around Jareth's hand.

The French horn came again, "All bow to His August Majesty, The Goblin King!"

Linda began an automatic curtsy, hoping she was facing the right direction, before she noticed that every single person and creature in the room had her or his or its head inclined in her direction. No, not her direction. She turned her head slowly.

Jareth stood straight and placid, eyes hooded graciously.

Candlelight from tall, standing candelabra, scones, and chandeliers high above sent a ripple like an oil slick across his iridescent, black, high collared silk suit. It peeked elegantly out of the folds of a great cape made out of lustrous black feathers that weaved in a breeze Linda could not identify or feel. Miniscule grains of sand—of glass—came from Jareth whenever he moved. He pretended to gaze at a spot somewhere to his right in order to give her a sideways look. Don't panic, it said. It was an undeniably self-assured, regal look.

Oh.

She was dressed in black as well, with a scooped neckline and a wide, wide skirt beneath her own cape of small, soft black feathers. While they also fluttered in that breeze she could still not place, no grains of any kind exuded from her. Her hair, however, now that she had occasion to move her head, was incredibly, almost impossibly long. She could feel the weight of it as Jareth led her forward in a stately procession like the world slowed to near standstill as she shot forward like a bullet towards what could only unmistakably undeniably and alarmingly be two painted, intricately carved wooden thrones.

Oh. Oh dear.

"Jareth," she whispered out of the corner of her mouth, "you're—?"

A tall, thin creature in black (and Linda had not supposed creatures could come any taller or thinner than Jareth), with the head of a crow, came forward. He blinked wide, yellow eyes and bowed with utmost respect and decorum to Jareth.

"Your majesty," he said a melodious, cultured voice. He turned to Linda and stood in expectant pomp.

Jareth gave her the briefest look of what he must have thought was reassurance, then nearly made Linda jump by saying, "My Queen, Linda."

Oh. Oh dear. Oh my.

The bird faced creature bowed to her. "Your highness," he said, arms waving out to the sides. "My apologies, we have not had a Queen before." His eyes flicked towards Jareth before he straightened and made a quick gesture with his hand.

The French horn voice came from beside the far doors. "All hail King Jareth, The Goblin King! All hail The Goblin Queen!"

All hailed, loudly and loyally, and Linda wondered when, exactly, the world had gone mad.

* * *

"You're… a king?"

"I am."

"You are not an actor…?"

"I am not."

Linda sank into one of several upholstered chairs in the bedroom like a birthday cake ballroom that she shared with… her husband? The King? Her head hurt.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she said at length.

Jareth combed out his hair several inches longer than Linda had ever seen it. "Because," he began nonchalantly, then caught her looking and his smile wilted into a sheepish grimace, "because I never could decide what the right time would be. I figured you'd freak if I told you first off, and then I figured you'd freak half-way through… and you've freaked now."

"I'm not freaking," Linda said. She pulled off a very expensive looking black slipper. "I'm—Well, yes, maybe I freaked a little. What did you expect?" She pulled off her other slipper and flexed her toes.

"Are you angry?" He slid off his chair and came to her on his knees, a black series of connecting rods. He tilted her chin towards him. "Are you?"

"No. I just…"

Her eyes wandered away from his face. Through the high windows of their room, she could see an English hedge maze that stretched out in every direction. It was beautiful. It was perfect. Her mind saw a different garden, a rambling, hand-tended one outside an English cottage on a hill.

"I can build it again," Jareth said softly. "Anything you wish, I can give to you. If you want the cottage, I'll rebuild it, right here, now."

She shook her head. "Thank you, but no. It wouldn't feel the same. The storm destroyed it. It's gone, and it deserves to live on only in memory."

He frowned at her words, but masked it quickly. He sat beside her, her hands in his, his thumb rubbing at the veins that led to her fingers. "Then shall I change the castle for you? What would you like it to look like?"

"I don't want it to look like anything," she said. She pulled her hands free. "Is this what it really looks like, something out of Versailles?" She stood, gathering her wide skirts as she paced in front of him. "I mean, is this real? I want to see where _you _live, not where you think I want you to live. This is very pretty, Jareth, and very opulent, but I want—I wish—to see the truth. Whatever it might be." She paused, hands by her side. "That is my wish."

He gave her a pained look. "You may not like it." He sighed, like a child called in to dinner after hours of make-believe in the backyard. He raised his hand and twitched his index finger despondently. His hand dropped onto his lap, and he was no longer in iridescent black silk, but in rather tatty jeans, a nondescript grey T-shirt, and worn Army boots. His hair was short and mousy brown.

Linda stood in a pleated skirt, blazer, and flats.

The room was sunbaked stucco with several cracks, and considerably smaller. The upholstered chairs were tanned leather and desiccated bone. They were badly worn and looked as if too much use would finish them off. Bird bones and small, spotted feathers and badly scrubbed chicken droppings littered the flagstone floor. Beyond the bare, recessed windows, Linda could now see a packed city so ravaged by time that most of the houses looked near collapse. Smoke and dust rose from it, and a stench of nearly everything that could rot or fester wafted by on a real breeze.

Jareth sat like a hollow man.

Linda took a step towards him.

"Yer majesty," a voice like an ocarina said, "the boys 'ave done as ye've right told 'em, right, an' built that chicken'a yers a nice 'ouse ter live in an—" A squat, smudged faced creature blinked rheumy eyes up at Linda. "'Ow now, wot's this?" It looked affronted. "Wot's a pretty lady like ye doin' in this place? I ain't holdin' with Fae standin' 'bout like this, wiv no proper treatsments, an' I don't care if _he_ 'ears 'cause—"

"I _can_ hear you, Nin," Jareth said in a weary voice. "And she's not Fae."

"No, I'm human," Linda said. She held out a hand to the creature. "I'm Linda. And, as I understand it, I am your queen."

A slow, wondering smile crept up Jareth's face.

Nin dropped to the floor. "Yer 'ighness!" he squeaked. "T'ousand pardons, yer 'ighness!"

Jareth stood from his decrepit chair. His hair was already several inches longer and one shade lighter. "Your queen," he said, eyes bright, "and my queen. And you shall obey her and love her and fear her."

Obedience. Love. Fear. It all sounded so simple. She would make it simple. She would rule with love and compassion and an iron will. Stars above knew these creatures needed it.

She held out her hand to Jareth. As their palms touched, Linda felt a flurry of black, feathered cape and gown and long, starless hair cascade down around her. Her skin tingled with the sweet pinprick of shards she recognized as Jareth's magic.

"My King," she said.

He raised her hand to his lips. "My Queen."

* * *

"_Sea la mai_," Mayte cursed, as swift backhands of wind that seemed to come from every direction tried to crawl in through her insides. She had two coats on, for the love of Our Lady of Altagracia. For a moment, she thought that maybe she had pulled on her skin wrong, but when she ran a quick check, feeling for any rip—as insignificant as it might seem—in the magic, she found nothing.

Damn. Kent was just miserably cold.

Finding Kent had not been a great problem. Without her human skin on, Mayte sped through the air—her San Antonio de Padua and her votives and her skin, carefully wound up, now a tiny pouch inside her mouth—seeming nothing but a very speedy firefly or some errant shooting star to the people who chanced to see her.

"A piskie!" a little girl giggled in some town in Scotland, but Mayte heard the girl's older sister put in a quick, "No such thing. Get your head out of the clouds."

Mayte grinned. She weaved along forests and moors, villages, towns and cities like burning coals far below her, until she deemed she was close enough to London. There, she used headlights and streetlights as cover as she sped from road sign to road sign, looking for anything that mentioned Kent. She got turned around by signs that pointed in one direction, only to really mean that she should have turned right at the _next _exit ("Then why not get the dumb sign to point at the actual road, huh?") (humans were as bad as goblins sometimes), before she finally reached her destination two hours after sunset.

She touched down on a suburban bungalow's roof. She spit out her pouch, then shook it out. Not a great idea, that. She flared bright, swirling pinks and greens in alarm as the duffel bag unfurled like some mad, giant's Boy Scout tent, landing on top of her with a rattle of votives and a smart crack to her head from the base of San Antonio. She battled out from beneath it, cursing in a creaking voice like hundreds of dry twigs snapping, "Dumb, Mayte, real dumb. Skin first, _then _shake the _condena'a_ pouch."

Her human skin looked floppy and sad as she pulled it out and unrolled it over the roof. It reminded Mayte strongly of a used condom, and she passed from an amused yellow sheen to an embarrassed, sober indigo as she looked down on it. That sad, floppy, condom skin was all that was really Mayte Orozco, thirty-two year-old waitress from New Hampshire, born at least twice in the Dominican Republic to the same family and under the same name because, hey, Latinos had this penchant for recycling names, so why not keep things simple for herself and use it twice?

Maïrakrallae. That was her real name, when she had flittered through the forests of The Labyrinth as a carefree, content piskie.

Content. Yeah, sure. Bored. Her clan of piskies did not much save bite a few things, cause a bit of mischief, and squabble over who got to wear the new rose petal they found, or the piece of gossamer string they pulled from some Fae's hair. Mayte went along with that for a goodly hundred years before she got bored out of her ever-shimmering nogging.

"Whatcha gonna do today?"

"Oh, bite a few things, cause a bit'a mischief, try on a new water lily dress."

"Whatcha gonna do tomorrow?"

"Oh, bite a few more things, cause more mischief, try on a new lily of the valley dress."

On and on and on. No wonder half the creatures of The Labyrinth were this close to lunacy. They were likely as fed up with that kind of mindless existence as she had been. Well, no more of that for her. She would crawl right back into Mayte Orozco, help Linda Williams, and then shimmy on down to Santiago de Caballeros once more, give Doña Orozco a strong, long hug for being so sane and ordinarily human.

Skin firmly in place, Mayte jumped down to the ground, duffel bag slapping her lower back with a thunck. She heard someone stir inside the bungalow, and she winced at her lack of foresight. Quick, sloppy magic made the teenage boy who leaned out of the window see nothing outside but a cat sauntering off across his lawn. A few, safe feet away, Mayte winced again as she realized she was now a naked human woman. Fuckity fuck fuck but that she was really displaying her brains today. Invisible, she snuck into a house or two, grabbed two coats, some socks, a pair of baggy track pants.

"Hurray for the bag lady look, Mayte. Real swell. You'll really impress these people the Singer sent you to find. Oh, you just _betcha_."

She could, of course, not feel the people themselves. But she could sense Labyrinth magic, like itchy mosquito bites all along her skin. Powerful stuff. Old spells, hundreds of them, like thick, goopy soup, undercut by very new, very reckless magic with a bite of glass shards to it. Mayte followed that trace. If she had picked up on anything from that man at the diner, it had been his reckless way with magic. Humans could not feel it, and wandered into it like clueless insects to a Venus flytrap, but any creature of The Labyrinth could have followed and sidestepped it blind. It didn't so much scream as outright holler within Mayte. It led her to an alley (where she caught the faint, elusive and properly weaved after-aura of a Singer), and then up the streets of what people would call Downtown Kent in the US. Likely had a spiffier, weightier name here.

Mayte drew her coats close about her and walked on, trying hard not to scratch like some mad woman at the mosquito bites, grains of sand and glass shards of magic building and building over her arms and legs and back. She felt as if she had only just ripped off her skin, sore and exposed. _Virgen santísima_, it was a wonder she could walk at all.

Her teeth were gritted against the exasperated wails she wanted to indulge in when the trace of shard magic hit a crescendo like microscopic needles jabbing beneath her flesh. "Ay, ow, ay" Mayte moaned, tears at the corners of her eyes. Through her pain, she could see a row of flats across from the street where she stood. Oh God, she would have to cross the street, find the right house.

Within a maelstrom of discomfort, Mayte stood in front of a flat with a worn, door and a round doorbell with a scalloped leaves design.

"This is bad, Mayte. Real bad. Whoever that man is who took Linda, he is one bad piece of work. Why are you still going through with this, _mija_?"

Because she liked Linda, and because she was—even if it annoyed her—a piskie. And piskies set wrongs right for the humans they liked.

Invisible, the skritching murmurs of thousands of glass slivers racing towards her and numbing her brain, Mayte stepped into the home of George and Sandra Underwood.

* * *

If one were to stand at any place in Goblin City and look up above ruined rooftops at the castle beyond it, one could—if one had a mind to—count three towers. Depending on the time of the day, month, weather, or the mood of the king within the castle (which changed rather more often than anything else), it might be four or five towers. But never any more than that.

The sixth tower was his and his alone. Should anyone stumble upon it as a (subsequently tragic) mistake, they would find themselves in an empty, circular white room with no windows and a thick layer of dust over the floor and walls. But nobody had ever stumbled upon it. This was mostly due to the fact that it had only existed for less than a month, but Jareth liked to cradle the notion of secrecy to him.

Nobody could bother him within the sixth tower.

He dangled a leather chord from which tiny bones swung and clacked together, the ghost claps of lost children, above Baby Joe. The baby followed the elliptical path of the bones with all the interest of an adult mourning the minutes spent trapped at an office meeting. Jareth rattled the bones over Joe's nose, eyebrows raised. No reaction.

"I'd love to say you're growing on me, Baby Blob. But you're just as boring as ever."

He picked him up and walked him to the balcony that overlooked the tangled expanses of briars, dead trees, and empty darkness that spread out behind the castle. It was not a part of The Labyrinth many creatures liked to visit, even goblins. The things that lived within it were as ancient as the Singers. They were twisted and cruel and disturbing and likely fed on blood and guts with all the finesse of rabid dogs. Fleas the size of rats and all of that.

"When you finally become a goblin, Blob, a real goblin, I think I shall send you down there. You're so unimpressed by everything, you might just be the goblin to wander in there and map the place for me." He jogged Baby Joe on his hip. "Mm? You're going to be a big brute, you know. I can feel it.

All I need is for your fool mother to forget about you. But your fool mother never cared much for me, so she doesn't dream about me. Not that I'll be doing that again any time soon. Too tiresome.

I do wonder if I couldn't just kill her. Wouldn't you like that? No more mommy, no more human shape for you, the freedom to be as brainless as you obviously already are. One little accident, you little lard, that's all it would take."

A smile like the pitiless scent of blood and vicious death in a dark alley, and Jareth tossed Baby Joe up to the ceiling.

He conjured a cot for him and let him drop inside it like a sack of flour down into a warehouse. He half hoped the wretched blob would start crying at such heartless treatment. It merely burped a little, then sat back in its usual, dazed stupor.

"You're no fun."

A glass window with triangular, lead panes tinkled to life at one end of the room. The sad sight that was Goblin City hobbled outside. Linda had grand plans for it. Clean it up, build new houses, repave the streets, dredge the muck from the fountain. She had already set The Maintenance Detail to shaping up the outer layers of The Labyrinth, starting with the Eastern Only Maybe Western Maze and all the way down to The Squiggly Bit of Land with an Occasional Pond.

"Can we rename these places?" Linda asked, every inch a queen as she sat at a table covered in maps, geological surveys, and surrounded by goblin cartographers so enamoured of her interest that they stood in a perpetual state of hands clasped in transfigured joy. "There's really no point to a lot of these names. They're so…"

"…random?" Jareth ignored the steely looks a few of the older cartographers levelled at him. "I know. But any attempt at a change would hopelessly confuse your easily muddled subjects, love."

Love.

The word still made her smile when he said it. She had come a long way from the fresh faced girl at the diner, drinking milkshakes in a high-ponytail, a fine young woman in plaid skirts and those hideous blazers humans seemed to favour of late. She was paler now, the cold centre of a star framed by night. The arch of her neck, the vague distance of her eyes when she was not looking at him or discussing matters of government with her aides, the graceful way she walked, the train of her dress like a dark, babbling brook. With care and patience, she shaped the castle into something real, something of pride and substance, with no more than good judgement in palace staff and upkeep and—Jareth was loathe to admit it—a much keener feel for the right set of chairs. She had the patience to deal with disputes, real or imagined. She did not wander away, wrapped in a low threshold for boredom, when Pam used more words than strictly necessary in order to inform her that The Queen of All Faeries required a monthly gift from The Labyrinth.

She did not hold with chickens in the throne room, but Cecile was allowed her own quarters. And Jareth could carry her about if he wished, so long as impromptu releases into the air did not occur within Linda's eyesight and without a goblin sweeping up behind Cecile in a frantic patter.

"Truly a most wonderful queen, Baby Blob," Jareth mused. He trailed out ever-tightening circles on the window panes. "Very thorough, very kind, very tidy. Very beautiful."

She said, long ago now, "My husband's cousin had his son stolen."

Had no heart for snatching human children.

Well. That would not be part of her duties.

She did not know, after all, of the existence of the sixth tower. And she never would.

* * *

Robert would not eat. He would forget to. He would forget to shave and comb his hair and he would forget that he had to go to the supermarket to get more food. He nearly flooded the bathroom when he drew Sarah a bath he forgot to tell her to take, and burned a can of ravioli for her lunch.

"I want mommy," Sarah said, face scrunched in a red scowl. "Mommy knew how to do this."

"Mommy didn't cook," Robert said absently. His stomach hurt, and he could not get rid of his headaches. He downed two aspirin and dropped on the den couch.

A neighbour whose daughter attended Sarah's school drove her to and back from first grade. Robert was terrified of letting Sarah walk to the bus stop by herself, of putting her on a bus, but, most of all, he was terrified of forgetting to pick her up.

"I'm coming over, Robert," his mom said over the phone. "This can't go on. Your sister dropped by to visit and she says the place is a pigsty and that Sarah is running around wild. Are you even showing up at work? You had a good job, son. A good job. You have a daughter to take care of. Think of _her_. Do you think you're the only one who has had to face tragedy? I lost your father, Robert. I lost him to—"

He dropped the receiver onto the countertop, his mother unaware that he was no longer listening, and wandered into the bedroom. Their bedroom. The pillows and the linen and the bathroom no longer smelled of Linda. Everything smelled of Robert. Only of Robert.

_Antigone _was cancelled. The Riverbed Theatre Company footed the bill for meals to be sent to the Williams household for a month.

A month. Thirty days. Thirty one. Linda had only been missing for nine days. A week had seven days. Two extra days added. All together, more than 48 hours. 216 hours without Linda. Robert had walked out of the police station before the officer had even started on his well-meaning, "Look, sir, the investigation is still open, but in cases like this…"

He thought about calling George.

"How did you do it? How did you survive?"

But he never called anyone.

Sarah took to avoiding him. She came home from school and locked herself in her room. Sometimes, he would see her on the back porch, reading and re-reading a little red book. She stood up abruptly one day, scattering her blanket and book, and rushed up to the maple tree in their yard. "Give back the mom you have stolen!" she cried, lobbing rocks at a high branch. "Give her back!"

"I'm worried about her, Mr Williams," her homeroom teacher said in a letter. "Role-play is a healthy part of a child's development, but Sarah no longer seems to know when to stop. She claims that her mother has been stolen by monsters, that they will steal you and her as well. She repeatedly screams during recess, claiming that a "devil owl" is following her, casting spells on her. She will read nothing but a fantasy book from home that she will not let other children borrow. She has become increasingly anti-social, and a disruption to the order of my classroom. She refuses to speak to the school trauma counsellor. I wish for both you and Sarah to attend a special teacher-parent-child conference this Friday. Together, we may a find a solution to this problem, before I find myself with no option but to involve child services."

Heartless woman. He ripped the letter in neat quarters and dropped it into the trashcan.

"Sarah?" he called from the back porch. He intended to sound warm and understanding, instead his voice was harsh and impatient. "What are you doing? There's nothing in that tree. Come inside right now."

She threw a rock at the porch and ran to the front of the house, so that she could bolt into her room without having to go past him.

Her book lay in a tangle of purple blanket on the porch. He picked it up. _The Labyrinth_. Nonsense. Childish nonsense. He flipped a few pages. The font was small and intricate, the ink thick and all but sunk into thin, acid-coated pages; likely published in the 19th century. The illustrations were not without merit, if ludicrous. Goblins and gnomes and pixies, a ridiculous, tall and skinny king who looked nothing like a goblin. His queen was the usual, Romantic notion of pale women with long black hair, the kind that drifted through shadowed woods and lured men into poetic despair. Pretty in a vacuous, porcelain way.

He traced the curve of her jaw. "Linda," he murmured. "Where did you go?"

At night, he would gaze sightlessly at the pale, square glow around the window shades, and he could not decide whether he wanted the police to find her dead or alive. Dead, it would be a tragic finale to a tragic play, something written by Shakespeare. The audience would exit feeling deep sorrow and pity for Robert and his daughter Sarah, robbed of wife and mother by the machinations of a sombre plot of inescapable fate.

Alive, he would be the dupe husband in a modern play. The audience would bleed their hearts over poor little Sarah, left with the fool Robert who was not man enough to hold onto his wife.

"Weddell hasn't shown up since August 21," Adrian said to him on the day he reported Linda missing. He kept his eyes averted from Robert as he smoked a cigarette. He flicked ash onto the porch. "I don't want to say anything, but—"

"Then don't."

Adrian shrugged bony shoulders. "You do what you think is right. But I'd get the police on Weddell."

Weddell. Goddamn Weddell.

Robert showed up at the police station on 24 August and amended his missing person's report. "My wife, she was at that diner, Porter's, with a man named David Weddell. They went in together. They're—they were—" He cursed. "They're both part of Riverbed. It's a theatre group. Listen, the Riverbed people haven't seen that Weddell guy since then."

"And you're telling us this now?"

"I—I didn't—"

"No," the policewoman said sharply. "You obviously didn't, Mr Williams." She made quick notes on a pad beside her. "I'll pass the tip along. Anything else you feel you should report? Sir?"

He slinked out with his tail between his legs.

His mother never showed up. She threatened to on several occasions, on the phone, but she never appeared at his doorstep. The neighbour continued to drive Sarah to school. Robert continued to miss work, citing bereavement. He thought about going back, something to keep his mind occupied, but it was so hard to get his fingers around his tie, to pull on both shoes.

"That poor man," he could hear them—all of them, the whole damn town—whisper. "What a tragedy, and him with that poor little girl. I'm not surprised. That wife of his was too pretty. Never any good, the pretty ones. They have no heart."

"Don't you say a fucking disrespectful thing about my wife!" a voice hollered at them within his head. Odd, how it sometimes felt as if he were hollering at himself.

On 1 September, the police showed up at the door, a Black woman with hair so short she looked bald and a grizzled type in a worn jacket and a low, smoke tempered voice. They wanted him to step out into the porch, away from the house, away from Sarah.

Robert heard them as they spoke in the voices of TV cops, the sound coming from another room, across frozen phone lines.

"Mr Williams, we've now interviewed all of the patrons who were at Porter's Diner on August 21. We did them all, from the breakfast crowd to the waitress who closed the place." The police officer paused, one large hand against the back of his neck (Henriksen, his badge said) (Robert's eyes ran across it, then trailed back to the man's face in a turgid, blank motion). "None of them saw your wife that day, or Mr Weddell. They came in every second day, as I understand it, and you notice when a regular doesn't show up. Also…"

The Black cop (her badge said Dorsey) exchanged a look with Henriksen. "We sent two men to the address the Riverbed Theatre Company supplied as Mr Weddell's home: 2 Reed St," she said. "Sir, 2 Reed St is a boarded property. Nobody has lived there for months."

"There is," Henriksen said in a low rumble somewhere below Robert's feet, "no record of a David Weddell with the phone company, electric, water, no accounts at any Londonderry or New Hampshire banks. As far as the system is concerned, there is no David Weddell."

"We dusted for fingerprints at Porter's Diner," Dorsey said, an uncertain undercurrent to her voice. "Witnesses claim your wife sat at the same table, number 4, every day she came in. We identified her fingerprints on the table. And only hers."

"Sir," Henriksen said, voice straining at the sound of his own words, "I'm a rational man. But I can't explain how a table at a busy diner gets to have only one set of fingerprints. We can extend this search into a nation-wide hunt, if that's what you want, get the boys at Massachusetts and New York involved. But I've gotta be frank with you, it's gonna be hard to find a woman who may or may not be with a man we have no way of tracing."

"I see," said a voice that sounded like Robert's.

"We can put this on nation-wide priority, Mr Williams," the TV cops said.

"Yes," Robert's voice said, "do that. Please. Thank you. I see. Thank you."

They left him on the porch, their red and blue lights crawling over his house's roof and up the maple in the yard as they turned onto the street. Robert's feet carried him inside, into the kitchen, where his hands lifted the telephone receiver off its hook and dialled an international number in Kent, England.

"Underwoods," George said. "Hullo?"

"How did you do it?"

"Wot? Who's this…?"

"How did you cope?"

"Wait, I know this voice—Robs? Robs, that _you_, mate?"

"How did you do it?"

"Do what? Look, mate, yer freakin' me out."

"When your son was stolen."

"Wot? Robs, are you mental? What son?"

"Your son was stolen."

"Listen, Robs, this ain't funny, right? You know I ain't get no bloody son. Now quit getting' fuckin' drunk and callin' me with this shite, okay?"

Robert's mouth moved. He heard the line cut off at George's end, heard the receiver clatter against the countertop hundreds of feet below him. A dial tone picked up, a drone that seeped in through Robert's ears in Linda's voice, like Ophelia drifting underwater, her hair ink smeared reeds as she sunk further and further from view, until only blue eyes within a porcelain face remained. "Robs," she said. Robs robs robs robs robs robs robs.

* * *

First, Mayte cast a dampening spell, to curve some of the glass-shard-magic echoes away from herself. Then, she crept into the bedroom of the people she had been sent to find and leaned over them as they slept. Cute couple. Average looking guy with short dark hair, not exactly thin, but not chubby either, decent musculature. Wife with shoulder length auburn hair, peachy skin with pink undertones, plump in a well-rounded way that likely got her called a fat cow.

"Whoa," Mayte breathed as she looked closely at the husband. "Mister, you got yourself some serious spell action going on. It's a wonder you remember your own name."

She experimented with removing the spell, got a nice stabbing into her palm from about twenty traces of long glass shards for her trouble.

"_Ca. Ra. Jo_," she muttered, blowing at her palm. "Okay. No more of that. You keep that spell, mister, while I go take a look at your wife." She patted his cheek.

The wife, thank Jove, only had minor spells hanging about her. Annoyingly strong minor spells, but nothing Mayte could not work around. A great deal of patches of memory isolated and jumbled for good measure.

Mayte began to pick at the spell carefully, weaving her own magic around the couple so that they would not wake. Powdered glass rained down on the pillow as the spell began to budge, strand by strand by stubbornly uncooperative strand. After a long, slow while, Mayte felt the loosened memories begin to poke at her mind, as if she had walked into a roomful of kids who could not wait to tell teacher who had seen the most important detail she needed.

"Right," she said, "what's up?" She listened, nodded. "Yeah? You don't say. Stolen kid? This stinks of goblin. Oh? It _was _a goblin? But _not_ a goblin? Oh-kaay. What was it then?"

Mayte's insides scrambled to be the first down to her toes.

"No shit? _That _guy? You sure?" Her insides stuffed themselves into her left toe. "Yeah, showing up doing stuff he couldn't and didn't do before, _that_'s bad. Eh? You got more for me? It's only my hide on the line here now, so why not? Shoot." She listened, feeling cold. "No kidding? That's the second time he takes without the proper words, then, 'cause he snatched this lady I like that, you know, maybe I shouldn't have gone looking for, by the looks of things here. Yeah, thanks for pointing out that it's too late now. Any chances he might not notice I'm pulling apart his spell?

Didn't think so."

Oh man, oh man oh man. Way to jump into a proverbial deep end, Mayte. So whatcha gonna do now, huh? The spell is untangled, the wife's gonna wake up and remember what really happened, and she's likely gonna freak. Won't have a clue what to do, will likely go mad as nobody believes her, least of all her almighty-spell stuffed husband.

Damn damn damn.

The voice of Doña Orozco jabbed a finger into her brain again.

You're a piskie, Mayte, for the love of _tostones_. You promised yourself you'd help Linda Williams, and you're here now, trying to help these two Brits. Are you really gonna bring _that guy _down on them again by mucking up his spell, getting feet like igloos, and then beating a path like Speedy Gonzales? _Mija_, you'd better not show your face in Santiago de Caballeros again if that's your plan.

Mayte heaved a long, long sigh that rattled her curls.

She leaned forward and began to whisper into the wife's ear, magic clinging to the sound of her voice. "Listen, lady, your son is in The Labyrinth. You can still save him, and I'm gonna tell you how. There are some words you gotta say, before and after. Now pay attention." She whispered the words, three times just to make certain. The wife's lips moved in her sleep, and Mayte nodded, satisfied.

"Good. Now, good luck. To both of us."


	6. Act VI

**Act VI**

Linda walked the corridors of her castle.

She passed through the lower levels, where the servants all scrambled towards the kitchen and laundry walls and doffed caps and dented pots as she passed, alarmed that their queen had been among them. She passed through the main rooms, the ballroom and the bedrooms, the library and the throne room, where Royal Aides bowed or inclined their heads in respect, where Pam, the Advisor Royal, fretted over whether everything was to her liking, satisfactory, complete, as she wished. She said that it was, and passed on to the winding staircases that led to the sentry towers and the parapets. The guards on duty all saluted. One nearly jumped out of his lookout tower in his surprise at seeing her there. She accepted their salutes with a faint, elegant nod, and passed on.

She walked the corridors that only she and Jareth ever saw, the ones that branched off behind doors only they could open. She could feel Jareth there, although she could not be certain whether it was his scent that made her think of him, or just her knowledge of his having been there. She trailed her fingertips along the walls, remembering her skirts bunched up around her hips, sweat and perfume, Jareth's face buried in her hair, his breath on her neck.

A smile hovered on her lips, then faded.

The corridors led to hundreds of staircases, to mazes within mazes, so that stairs spread out above and below, to her left and right, leading in all possible directions at once, even backwards as one moved forward. The trick, Jareth told her, is to forget where you want to go. Empty your mind of the thought of a destination. Simply walk. Linda listened to the deep, insistent rustle of layers of fabric and the tap of her slippers on stone as she weaved her way across the maze.

Her mind truly was empty. She merely moved forward.

She passed through a door and found herself in a long corridor of grey slate whose length and high, vaulted ceiling dissolved into a complete lack of colour or light.

She had never wandered into this corridor before. It gave her pause. She hovered at the place where grey slate gave way to utter shadow, a diver gripping rock with her toes before plunging into the foaming sea below.

A sound like bones falling into dust, the echoing laughter of tree limbs twisting, tendrils and roots knotting in a groan of subterranean, papery voices, all of it borne on a roiling wind that seemed to have its own voice, ancient and thin and patient.

Linda crossed into the darkness, and it closed around her.

* * *

There was something wrong with George. There was something seriously wrong with George, and it scared Sandra. She locked herself in the bathroom and waited for him to leave for work, her ear pressed against the door for fear that she might not hear him leave and walk into him in the kitchen.

"Sandra?" he said from the bedroom. "Love, you're not goin' to say goodbye?"

She bit her knuckles. With an effort, she called out, "Goodbye! I'm not feeling well, don't want you to catch something!"

"Right," he said doubtfully. He stood a bit longer in the bedroom—she could feel him—before he finally thudded across their flat and towards the front door. The keys jangled as he picked them up from their copper dish, a muffled series of clacks signifying that he had stuffed them into a pocket. The lock clattered back, a hinge whined, and then his work boots thudded across the doorway. At long last, the door clapped into place. Sandra counted up to one hundred before she unlocked the bathroom door.

She sat back down on the toilet lid and toyed with the idea of calling her sister, only she could not think of a single way to start that would not make her sound insane. Perhaps she _was_ insane. Would she know? Insane people think they are sane; it is the sane who ponder insanity. Right? God. She knew this much:

A brown skinned woman with a thick accent had told her Joe was alive, inside a labyrinth.

George acted and spoke as if Joe had never been born. Sandra showed him the picture on the side table, and George looked puzzled, asking if she was okay in a guarded way.

David Jones had visited their flat on the night Joe disappeared, with longer hair than Sandra knew him to have and acting erratically. Asking after Baby Joe.

And Sandra had stayed at the kitchen counter, drying dishes.

"I'm so sorry, Baby Joe," she murmured, "but there was nothing mum could have done, and she's very sorry about that."

She pushed off the toilet and headed into the living room. She called in sick at work, ordered delivery Indian, and then sat cross-legged on the floor, chewing korma as her thoughts tussled and churned.

If her dream (if it had been a dream) was true (and real), then Joe was alive, and she could save him. If her dream was just that, a dream, then it was just wishful thinking and she was being a fool. She had been made to memorize two phrases, had been told she could save Baby Joe.

She didn't really believe that nonsense, did she?

If it was real, then it meant that weird shite was real, and no part of Sandra's brain really wanted to believe that. It stared in horror at the part of Sandra's brain that said, knuckles to lips, "But what if it is? Once, ships fell off the side of the Earth, and that did not stop the Americas from also being real."

But if it was not real, then Sandra would feel such a fool. Such a devastated fool. She dreamt she could save her son, and acted on the advice of a dream. A mother pushed heartfirst into madness by her grief, babbling about—

"—goblins."

Her head dropped into her hands, her fork splattering to the carpet. David. David fucking Jones and his book on goblins, reading every bloody night to Joe. The Earl King, Baby Blob, pay attention. In one breath Sandra understood all of it, willed the threads together. In the next breath her mind wailed in a burst of jagged yellows and reds that there was no such thing as goblins, you stupid woman, that David Jones was just an eccentric bastard.

He made you forget.

Stop it. That makes no bloody sense.

You know he made you forget, Sandra. He took your baby. Weird shite, Sandra. Weird shite. I'm so sorry.

She would feel such a devastated fool.

Twenty-three minutes later, Sandra was on a bus to the metal works George worked at. She carried an overnight with Joe's blanket and a piece of note paper with two phrases written on it and a steak knife.

* * *

There were voices within the voices, wind like the paper they were written on. In the darkness, branches and leaves, cobwebs and debris reached out to Linda, tangled in her hair and the skirt of her dress. She barely acknowledged them, all she cared about were the voices. She followed them and trailed them and stood within them.

They sounded like Jareth, but not Jareth. A deep register mingled with lower, whispery voices, layered with a higher pitch and echoing middle tones, until the one voice belonged to many throats. It said, "Woman" and, at the same time, it said, "Lady" and it said, "Mortal" and "Human" and "Linda Cornell." It paused, breathing through her lungs. "What Where does is she wish going?"

"Please," she pleaded, fingers to her temples, "one at a time. I can't—"

The deep voice said, "Where is she going?" and the middle register slipped in behind it, "What does she wish?"

"I don't know where I'm going," Linda said quietly. "I don't know where I am."

"That is is not may be none of her concern important for her to know merely darkness."

"Merely darkness?" she addressed the deep voice. It appeared the most helpful. "Am I still in The Labyrinth?"

"Yes perhaps no of course."

"I see."

There was no point in looking around. There was nothing to see, not even the pops and flashes behind her eyelids. There were thick woods around her, so old and untended that vegetation warped and grew and tangled over every surface, but she knew this only because she could smell earth like mud on her tongue and the pure coolness of oxygen rich air shielded from sunlight. The weight of it settled on her skin, even as other scents came and went around her. Something pungent and twisted with the heavy, tell-tale signs of rotting flesh and organs. Bird carcasses. It made Linda think of bird carcasses, lying by the roadside as she walked to school.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"I am," all the voices said.

"Can I return to the castle?"

"She may may not does not belong return to the castle."

"I am the queen," she said, proud and authoritative.

"She is thinks may become not."

"Stop this," she commanded. "I am The Goblin Queen, and if this is still The Labyrinth, then I am owed obedience."

"You are owed?" the deep voice said. A second voice said, "You are owed nothing, mortal woman," and a third, high-pitched voice said, "We owe you nothing, Linda Cornell," before the deep voice (Jareth, Linda thought) (why does it remind me of Jareth) said, softly, "You are not yourself, Linda Cornell. Your pain lies like fine dust within you." The voice dipped and fell, shuddered, distorted, like a broken tape deck or the churning babble between radio stations. "Oh, if I could tap your veins, pull the writhing memories like the thoughts of electric currents. Your husband—"

"My husband is King Jareth, and you will take me to him!"

"—and your child," the voice whispered, weaving about her until she could almost feel someone standing behind her.

Linda whirled around.

A long, grey slate hallway stretched out behind and in front of her.

* * *

George took the call the foreman had yelled out he had on line two. He stood within the filing cabinet mess of the foreman's office, looking across at a faded poster of a yellow Lamborghini. It looked more white than yellow, tinged with faded blue ink.

"Underwood," he said.

"George," Sandra said.

"Sandra?"

"Yes, Sandra. Bloody hell, George, why do you always act so surprised when I call you?" She sniffled. He was pretty sure she sniffled. "Anyway, I just wanted to call you, tell you I love you."

"Oh, Sandra, come now, love, y—"

"I _do_ George, I love you. And I know I've been… difficult lately, all muddled up and whatnot. But I do, you know. Love you."

"And you called to tell me?"

"And I called to tell you."

Oh, Sandra, you daffy girl. He was smiling. He kissed the telephone's mouth piece loudly. "Love you too, you silly bird. And, listen, all of this you're goin' through, with thoughts of not 'aving a baby, we'll deal with it. Everythin' will be all right. Right?"

"Right," she said faintly. Only to be expected. Baby steps.

"Absolutely." He kissed the mouth piece again. "Listen, love, I gotta go, though. Foreman ain't gonna be too 'appy with his minions talkin' for more than a minute on his ruddy phone. But we'll talk when I get 'ome, eh?"

"Yes." A pause. "I do love you, George. I always have."

He smiled, remembered she could not see him and said, "Aye."

The call ended.

The clang and jingle of change striking a metal plate hung about Sandra as she replaced the receiver of the public phone. She left the change. No sense in taking it.

She had not been brave enough to face George. Had fully intended to walk into the metal works, tell him everything, kiss him goodbye. But her feet had fastened to the concrete across from the factory. She eventually found a public phone. In her mind, her goodbye had been longer, more meaningful. He would have picked up on her tone and been serious and warm, understanding that something important was going to happen.

The world just didn't work that way, and neither did George.

She did love him. She dearly hoped she would see him again.

Sandra picked up her overnight, riffling through it as she made her way to a public park. Secluded, public parks. Much better to look a fool in front of trees than in the middle of the shopping district. She chose a spot beneath a tunnel bridge, deep within it, where she was shielded from passers-by.

Right. Here we go.

She pulled out the paper and read the first phrase silently to herself again. She had memorized it, but she had never been all that good with memorization. She might fuck up. Her cheeks itched, as if they had poofed up. God, she was going to look _such _a fool.

"Come on, Sandra, old girl, just get it over with."

She shook out her arms, held out the paper in front of her.

"I wish—oh God, this is so insane—I wish g-goblins would take me away to my son."

She screwed her eyes shut.

Nothing.

She opened her eyes. The dirty great tunnel was still all around her. Just as she knew it would be. A sob echoed out, and she crumpled the paper in her hand. She knew it had been a stupid, stupid thought, but it still bloody well hurt. Her shoulders shook as she sobbed, her overnight still gripped in her hand.

Stumbling, she turned to go.

That was the moment when the ground opened up and then shot up above her, mounds of dirt muffling her scream even as they pulled her into the ground.

* * *

Pam liked Her Majesty, The Goblin Queen. Being a goblin, he did not find her human shape particularly beautiful, but she was not unpleasant to the eye. And she listened to him, well and truly listened to him. She was fascinated by both what he said and—he could tell—the way he said it, all of his verbose vagaries and dips and bows and hand curlicues.

It touched him. He felt well and truly appreciated.

And so, it distressed him to see Her Majesty upset. He approached her with care as she sat in the library, her cup of tea ignored, knuckles against her mouth and thumb worrying at her lower lip as she frowned out her thoughts.

"Your highness…?"

She turned her face toward him sharply. "Where is my husband?"

"He had a pressing matter to attend to, your highness, and has gone to deal with it. He left instructions not to be disturbed."

"Even by me?"

Pam wrung his hands. He was grateful when her majesty let that matter drop. If anything, the answer seemed to lessen some of her frown. She looked merely thoughtful now, and troubled.

"Advisor Royal," she said at length (and Pam thrilled at her use of his proper title), "I would talk with you." She ran her fingertips in slow circles round her eyelids and the bridge of her nose. "I feel… I must ask…"

"Your majesty," Pam said, "I am at your service."

She gazed at him. He saw confusion there, and sadness and regret. Her voice had the hollowed despair of those who fear the answers they seek. "Who am I…?"

"You are my queen, Her Majesty, The Goblin Queen."

"Am I…?" Pam hesitated. Her voice hardened somewhat. "Am I?"

"Y-your majesty, it is not—"

"It _is _your place. If I am your queen, then it is my right to command that you answer all of my questions."

Silence, then, with some difficulty, "_If_ you were my queen," he bowed his head, "my lady."

Her chest rose as she hitched a deep breath, eyes averted. Her hands joined on her lap. She drew in several breaths before she looked at Pam once more. "Who am I?" she said, and she looked different, like an exquisite doll in black velvets and tulle, pale and shrunk within her cape of black feathers. Pam's heart ached. "Who am I really?"

"I… I do not know, my lady."

"I am not your queen. And Jareth…" Her voice tailed away with an uncertain frown. "Jareth is not my husband. Has never been my husband. Yes... I remember. We lived in The Wastes, in a house on a hill. He built it for me, pulled it from the air around us. I…" More of her elegance crumpled into her gown. "I _had _a husband. I am Linda Williams. I am an actress. I had a husband. I lived in…"

Her face twisted and reddened, her lips curled as tears fell down her cheeks. She swallowed, pushed on. "I had a daughter. I have a little girl, Pam."

Pam pulled a handkerchief from his waist coat pocket and handed it to her. As she scrubbed at her eyes, embarrassed at her tears, something unsettling began to build within Pam. It was like walking across a tar pit, something that threatened to pull him down even as he struggled to move quickly and break free. The stench of it clawed at his nostrils and at his eyes. He did not want to give it a name, but he found himself speaking nonetheless.

"Did you come here willingly, my child? Did you wish to come to The Labyrinth?"

"Did I wish? My God, it seems all I do is wish! Jareth says it so often. Anything I wish, he will give to me, or build for me or magic for me. I have never had so many wishes granted in my life!" She tossed Pam's handkerchief onto the empty cushion beside her. "He called himself David Weddell and he brought me here through pictures. I… can't remember whether I wished it or not. It was so long ago. Perhaps I did."

Perhaps she did. But the unsettling feeling remained within Pam.

"Do you wish to stay?"

The words touched a memory within Linda, and she withdrew momentarily, her eyes far back into the past. She banged a fist into her lap. "Curse you," she muttered. She stood up. "Pam, Advisor Royal," she said, almost a queen again, if merely a stage queen now, "can you do something for me? Even if I'm not your queen? As… as a favour? To… to—"

"To a friend," Pam said with a self-conscious cough. "And while I am not certain of what it is you wish to ask of me or, even, if what you wish to ask may not be of a most inadvisable nature, I do remain, to the extent of my capabilities, more than willing to listen to your request and, perchance, grant it." He inclined his head, hands outstretched as if he were bowing. "My lady."

She digested his words, her eyes ticking left to right as if she were reading them. "Thank you," she said at last.

"What may I do for you?"

"I wish to see my daughter."

Pam felt a tug at his feet, like tar. "I do not have the authority or the power to return her ladyship aboveground, I regret to inform." The tug came again, closing over his left foot. "However, there is a certain… something that may be able to grant your wish."

"Something?"

"A Singer, your ladyship. I must summon a Singer for you."

Linda said, "Then do so, Advisor Royal," and Pam felt his feet catch in the tar, of his own choosing, for good or bad.

* * *

Somebody was speaking. Sandra could make out words. She knew what they were. It was words like "hundred" and "twenty" followed by "four," and "hundred" and "twenty" kept repeating themselves, like a drone, until "twenty" was replaced by "thirty" and Sandra's brain snapped completely into place and she knew that somebody was counting.

In the swaying, maddening voice of David Jones.

She raised her head, glaring.

"One hundred and thirty-seven," David said. "Only two minutes and seventeen seconds under. I am impressed, Sandra."

The bastard had her son, balancing Joe on his hip as if he were a doting father.

"Give him back," Sandra said. She pushed herself to her feet. "Give me back my baby."

He took two steps back. "Ah ah. You said you wished to be taken to your son, and you have. He's right here." He jogged Baby Joe up and down. "But that was all you said."

"You fucking bas—"

"Sandra," he tutted, "is that any way to talk in from of dear Baby Blob? I want him to grow up a gentleman. I'm sure George would want the same, if he remembered he had the little brat to begin with."

Sandra made as if to snatch at Joe, found her fingers closing over empty air. She tried several times, cursing, as David's eyebrows rose higher and higher in frank surprise.

"Why do you keep trying? Here," he held out Baby Joe to her, "you can try again." He laughed as she reached out to grab the baby, already several feet to the right of her and still within David's arms. He picked up Joe's wrist and waved its limp fist in Sandra's direction. "Not even crying," he mused. "And I certainly haven't heard him make any noise that could even be confused with recognition. Are you sure you really want this baby, Sandra? You could do so much better."

"Shut up! Shut the _fuck up_, David!"

He complied with a mocking tilt of his head. Bastard was enjoying this. Had dolled up in spiked, crayon red hair and a coat made from a tattered Union Jack. He leaned against the walls of a stone tunnel that could have been the park in Kent, if it had not been for the coppery sheen to the light around them that made Sandra certain that she was not in England anymore. Bastard was waiting for something, Sandra was certain of it. For Sandra to get tired, for himself to grow bored, for monsters to come and take Sandra away. Monsters. That's all they were. Monsters and the creep who led them.

"I'm not dreaming," Sandra said. "I know that, you know."

He nodded. "Very good. What else do you know?"

"Why us? Why did you pick me and George?"

"Do you really think you're the only ones? That you'll be the only ones?" He pulled one finger under each of his eyes, then over his eyelids. He held up Baby Joe so the baby could admire his newly applied eyeliner, grinned two rows of crooked teeth as Joe finally gurgled a sound. "Good boy! And good taste. Yes, I'll keep it." He hoisted Joe up onto his left shoulder, patting his bum. He smiled in the face of Sandra's disgust and envy. "I didn't pick _you_, Sandra, I pick whoever I want to, whenever I want to.

Although, next time, I'll be sure to not go leaving traces of myself in people's dreams. Fool of a George kept pestering me, trying to sniff me out."

"Give George back his memories."

"So you want the baby, for me to shut up _and _George's memories?" He made a throwing gesture upwards, then caught a glass sphere deftly in his hand. He rocked it back and forth on his palm. "Well, the second request is not one I care to grant, incredibly fond as I am of the sound of my voice, but your first and third requests I have right here, Sandra. Which one will it be?"

"You can't toy with me this way."

"I already am. And it's either you take the baby and head back to a husband who will forget he exists every time he looks away from it, or you take your husband's memories and you both learn to live with the pain of losing your son. It seems an easy choice to me."

Bastard. He's just toying with you, riling you up so you won't think straight. Don't be a fool, Sandra. She rubbed her hands over her face. She pressed her palms against her closed eyes and gathered her thoughts together. The words. There was a second phrase, the one she needed to say in order to get out.

But would Joe come with her? The dream had said nothing about that. Would she get a second chance, if she failed to bring back Joe this time? She didn't want to find out. Fucked up David would probably make it so she could not come back a second time. It was now or never.

She looked straight into David's grinning face. "You have no po—"

He backhanded the air in front of him, all trace of mockery gone from his face. A curious, painful sensation bit into the skin around Sandra's mouth, as if large fingers were pinching at her skin, forcing her lips together. Her hands flew up, convinced that she could grasp onto whatever it was and free her mouth. Her palms felt all along her cheeks, down to her jaw, below her nose. As she patted them over and over against her face, Sandra felt her stomach lurch, her lungs straining with the need to scream. But she could not scream. She could not talk.

She had no mouth.

David opened his tattered coat and placed Baby Joe inside. Sandra felt tears at the corners of her eyes as the coat was drawn closed and her son, looking about him in a daze, disappeared from sight. David looked at her with a terrible calm.

"I don't know who taught you those words," he said, "or why anyone would be foolish enough to do so, but this is at an end."

He snapped his fingers, and Sandra was hurled up and back against the tunnel wall. She stared in horror as the stone sank forward into her flesh, rock replacing skin until she was embedded into the wall, only her shoulders and head hanging out. David looked up at her, rubbing his index finger back and forth across his chin, some poncy critic at a Post-Modern art show. He tilted his head this way and that, pursed his lips, then reached up to press his thumb against Sandra's forehead. With a soft, pulpy squelch, she sunk a few inches further into the wall.

"There," David said. Then he added, "By the by, it's not David, Sandra. It's Jareth. The Goblin King, at your displeasure. And he is most displeased." He clasped his hands behind his back. "Well, but at least you won't be moving from here. I'll have to pay George one last visit, wipe you from his memory." He gave her a sudden smile. "Oh! I should thank you, then. I wondered what to do about you, and now you've come along and handed the solution to me. How very considerate of you."

As he stepped back, the copper light began to die out, like an old movie switching to the next scene. Sandra struggled on the wall, tears streaming down her face. She was scared of the dark. So scared of the dark. Oh God. God. Joe. She had lost Joe. Her shoulders jerked in pathetic impotency as the painted man with David's face took all hope and light with him.

* * *

Mayte's Singer was not responding. This was not good. That could only mean one thing. Sandra had made it into The Labyrinth, and The Goblin King had found out about it. And—to her distress—Mayte had apparently been quite correct in her assessment of this Goblin King as some seriously nasty piece of work. She could feel shards prodding at her skin even from here, aboveground.

She jumped from one foot to the other in a nervous jig as she looked around at what little defences she had with her. Her San Antonio which was no longer responding, a pile of useless votives, and a smelly duffel bag.

That was it.

"Stupid, stupid _stupid_ Mayte. You've really gone and done it now. Did you help Linda Williams? Nope. Did you help these two Brits? Nope. And you know what else? As a piskie, you are now bound to help all three of them. You were _supposed_ to help all three of them."

She dropped to the ground in the middle of the Underwood flat in a despondent slump.

About an hour later, after she had polished off a half-pint of raspberry swirl ice-cream and had moved onto a bar of chocolate, a rattle of keys and locks snapping back came from the front door. The husband walked in like some daffy, English Ricky Ricardo.

"Sandra! I'm ho-ome!"

He stared at Mayte sitting cross-legged on his living room floor.

"Oh," Mayte said, transferring her Yorky bar from one side of her mouth to the other. "Forgot to make myself invisible, didn't I? _Mierda_."

The husband's eyebrows and mouth were doing very entertaining things. He had quite an expressive face, and would have been an excellent actor had he not chosen to do whatever it was that he did instead. Mayte looked down at his sturdy work boots, then up his jeans and blue shirt. Blue-collar worker. This was England, so she figured he was one of those miners that were always staging protest marches.

"Hey, Husband of Sandra," she said with a resigned wave. "I'm Mayte Orozco. I may or may not have ensured that you'll never see your wife again."


	7. Act VII

**Act VII**

Snap a bone in two, draw a circle on the ground. Doesn't need to be big, just wide enough for a bowl of water. Place the bones within the water, draw blood from all who are summoning. Pam dearly hated that part, but he pulled at a hangnail nonetheless, dipped his finger into the water and watched as his blood spread out in bright red arabesques, like fine filigree.

He gestured to Linda. "Now you, my lady."

Linda pulled a bone pin from her hair and jabbed it into her finger, teeth gritted, her thoughts firmly on the wish to see her daughter again. She dipped her finger into the bowl as Pam instructed.

The filigree blood swirled together, patterns forming and crashing into one another. One red tendril rose above the water in a spiralling motion. Other tendrils rose behind it, looping around the first and each other, until they hard formed a tower of blood whose edge brushed the library ceiling.

"I summon the Singer of the Ways," Pam said in a loud, clear voice.

Linda wondered at that voice. The creature's neck was stiff with fright, taloned hands balled at his sides.

The tower pulsed crimson, dyeing the entire library red as a fire lights a cave, then dropped away. In its place was a vague shape made up of tendrils of blood that looped and re-looped within the space where the tower had been. The face of a horned elk, an owl with its wings stretched high above its head, fire, a drifting supernova, and so many other shapes that Linda's brain hurt just to look at it.

"I like to view it as an unfurling scroll," Pam whispered out of the corner of his beak. The effect reminded Linda strongly of a school assembly. "What about you?"

"I-I don't know," she whispered back. "But I like supernovas quite a lot."

The shape settled into a supernova, translucent red tendrils drifting and expanding like nascent star matter across a vast universe, the hint of a dead star at its centre. It was beautiful.

"What do they wish?" a reverberating voice said within Linda's head, spreading out to strain at her temples and the edges of her skull.

Pam bowed, hands clasped tightly in front of his chest for courage. "For myself, I wish nothing of Your Eminence. I summon you with my blood on behalf of the Lady Linda Williams, whose blood has likewise been spilled for your summons."

The Singer swirled a cloud of space dust towards Linda. Careful fingers prodded at her mind. It was so much like Jareth's magic that she jerked away, an uncomfortable spike of feeling running down her spine. She heard Pam say her name, a little alarmed. She shook her head.

"It may be that she has had a powerful spell placed upon her," the voice said with no trace of judgement. "It may be that it cannot be removed." The Singer pulsed and dimmed as shadowy shapes collided within it. "Linda Williams may not leave The Labyrinth."

"But—!"

Pam raised his hand to speak. Even in her disappointment, it still reminded Linda of a school assembly. He cleared his throat as the Singer shifted its sightless centre towards him. "Ah, yes." He coughed again. "Um, well, you see, it occurs to me now that, perhaps, I may have acted in haste when I informed Your Eminence that I wished for nothing. I do, in fact, have a wish…" His voice tailed off, and the frantic, terrified dart of his eyes was evidence enough that the Singer was prodding his mind. He staggered after the Singer was done. "Q-quite," he breathed.

The Singer drifted a few inches toward the ceiling. "What does he wish?" it rumbled across Linda's bones.

Pam gave her a closed look. Linda summoned all of her gratefulness to him, appreciation, love, hope, and willed it to show on her face. His beak broke into the nervous shadow of a smile. Then he straightened.

"I wish to visit Linda Williams' daughter, that I may bring her briefly to The Labyrinth."

"What place may Linda Williams' daughter be found?"

At Pam's questioning look, Linda said, "Londonderry, New Hampshire." She added, "The United States" as if afraid the Singer would find fault with her information.

Londonderry, New Hampshire. The words made Pam's breath catch in his throat. He thought of King Jareth, of his baffling request to shift The Labyrinth's frequencies along the Atlantic Ocean. Oh dear, he thought like a flutter of fingers, somewhat peeved at even his mind's inability to react in a less formal manner. What, he had wondered, could be so important about Londonderry, New Hampshire. He stole a glance at Linda, her pale, rounded face dyed soft pinks and reds as the Singer hovered above her, and he felt the tug of tar at his feet stronger than ever.

I do often wish His Majesty were more open with me, he mused sadly.

"Is that what he wishes?" the Singer said.

"Yes," Pam said.

A door drew itself out along a far wall with the crackle and hiss of fire eating into wood. Smoke rose to the ceiling and across the carpeted floor.

"His wish may be granted."

With that, the Singer stretched further and further apart, until it broke away into inconsequential wisps, like stars at dawn.

Linda let out an audible, relieved sigh. Pam dropped onto the nearest thing he could find, a library trolley. It squeaked away under his weight, and he stumbled like a straw dummy before righting himself. It was amazing how much decorum he could still maintain, even after flailing about.

"Your ladyship," he said gravely, "I must take leave of you now. I shall be back shortly, with your daughter." He hesitated, then took up Linda's hands. "You understand that I cannot keep your daughter within The Labyrinth? It will have to be a brief meeting, although I believe the Singer understood that by brief I meant at least a few days. At your discretion. The child will, of course, be missed in the human world. As, indeed—Oh." He looked at Linda as if seeing her for the first time. "Oh," he said again.

Linda understood all too well. "As I am," she said. She cursed Jareth. Her husband. Her husband must think her dead by this point. She had been gone so long. And her daughter… Curse that Jareth. She squeezed Pam's talons, hard and bony beneath her hands. "You're going to scare the living shit out of my daughter, and I'll have to explain too many things to her once you bring her to me. But thank you, Pam. Thank you. I wish there were stronger, more proper words."

"That, your ladyship, is my area of expertise. And, to be frank, even lengthy thank-yous all patter out to simply, well, thank you."

With a shudder and a faint, "Oh dear," he stepped through the Singer's door. He turned round in the portal, cupped his hands around his beak, and called out, "I'd keep Jareth out of the library!" Then, he took two steps away from her, and he was gone.

Linda locked the library. She set a goblin to nail up a Temporarily Closed sign on the door, and then went in search of Jareth. He looked very pleased with himself when she found him walking the corridors meant only for them. He showed her a little wooden shadow box with an intricately sculptured pair of wax lips at the centre of tanned leather bits—like a pig's bladder—dyed sloppy reds and oranges. The lips looked so real, the wrinkles and dips still as rosy as in life, it made Linda turn away quickly.

"Not your type of art, love?" He cupped his palm over the box and made it disappear. "There." He shook himself out a striped, red and yellow knitted sweater, gazing shrewdly at her face as he pulled the sleeves down past his fingers. "There's an odd look about you. Have you done something you regret to the castle?"

She took his hand. She made certain that her thumb lingered over the veins on his wrist, that her eyes hooded just so. She leaned forward and brought her lips to his ear, breasts brushing against his chest. "I wish," she breathed, eyes half-closed as his breath caught. The sound of it, the feel of his body's reaction against hers, the way his pulse quickened at his wrist, it still sent the same spike of desire down her body. Damn it, even after all this time.

It made her feel less guilty about Pam, as Jareth's hands slipped beneath her skirts, the fabric bunching up around her hips, and he trailed cool fingertips up along her inner thighs. But her guilt at deceiving him pounded within her even as she moved beneath him. Liar, it said, as his hips moved. Liar liar liar. His fingers shuddered around her face after release, sweat clinging to his palms, and he leaned down to whisper in her ear. I love you. Linda. I love you. She could not bear to hear it. She cupped his face before he could part his lips and kissed him into silence.

* * *

George was taking it all pretty damn well, for a man shrunk to a mere five inches and travelling within a duffel bag next to a statue of San Antonio de Padua. Mayte had not told him the bag would be shrunk into a pouch she would pop in her mouth. That probably helped. Although, in her defence, she made it quite clear that she was not human and that under no circumstances was he to look as she changed into her real form.

He would likely be fine and dandy with a small, pinkish piskie. A dark skinned girl ripping off her skin? It even freaked Mayte out sometimes.

The burning Christmas village that was London gave way to the bonfires of smaller cities and towns, and soon Mayte cleared England. She sped over the dark mass of the Atlantic Ocean, skimming the water's surface at night (if she frightened some fisherman half to death, then so be it), shooting up into the clouds once the sun broke. She kept her eyes peeled for the nearly physical grey dome that was New York City. She turned right at Yonkers, and hurtled on, all of her senses open.

The Labyrinth had moved, and its frequencies were definitely humming at her from the US, from someplace in New England. It made her all that more determined to clear out back to the Dominican Republic once this was all—well, she would avoid all references to things no longer moving forward in a manner which included breathing for now.

"Come on Labyrinth," she muttered around her pouch in her voice like snapping twigs. "Where'd you go, huh? Brownie points for not choosing Central Park, _mijo_, but I'd really, really, really like it if you haven't decided on…" A rattle of glass shards grazed her belly, and then her stomach flopped off somewhere behind her.

Londonderry, New Hampshire.

Fuckity fuck fucking fuck fuckers.

I haven't even met you, she thought in a flare of searing red, but you're already my least favourite Goblin King, buddy.

Cursing to bring her ancestors hurtling from their graves, she dove down into Londonderry. Out of curiosity, she sped past Porter's Diner. "Help Wanted: Waitress," said a hand-written notice on the door. Good old Bill. A missing person's poster with Linda's face had been taped up next to it. A picture of the man with mismatched eyes had been added to it. David Weddell, the caption read. Right. His name couldn't be anything but Jareth. She had lived under two Kings Jareth now, neither of which had ran around snatching humans and shifting The Labyrinth and certainly not leaving fucking heaps of magic behind them. Insane place, The Labyrinth, but not needlessly belligerent.

Why was she trying to find it again?

Oh yeah, debt to humans. Piskie nature. La di da. If she was honest, her true motive for hurtling on was the sound of Doña Orozco's voice, still banging iron _calderos _at her temples from within her head. "I not raise a coward! I not raise a _coward_!"

"Yes, _mami_," she mumbled, nearly spitting out her pouch. "See me still flying? See me trying to find the—hold on one goblin bashing minute!" She stopped, doubled back. She flew in a circle, then sniffed the air.

Blood. Goblin blood and piskie blood and Fae blood and blood from every creature within The Labyrinth. She touched down on the grounds of a public park, then snapped back as the sole of her right foot touched the grass. It burned. Hovering, her body swirling through the purples and blacks of un-honky-doriness, she reached out one finger towards the grass, and a mass of miniscule glass shards immediately hurtled towards it.

She had found the entrance to The Labyrinth aboveground. Another nasty piece of work from that nasty piece of work Jareth.

Did this guy do anything without ripping things apart?

She spat out her pouch. She cracked it open and whispered, in as low a voice as she could muster, so as not to burst George's eardrums. "Could I have the rolled bit of blanket, please?"

The bundle propped itself out of the bag and dropped to the ground. "I 'eard ye," George shouted, a faint sound, "you kept mutterin' to yourself, and I don't even wanna know why I could 'ear ye, 'cause it sounded like somethin' out of Monstro, and I ain't contemplatin' 'aving been inside anybody's mouth 'cause I jest don't even wanna _know_."

Poor George.

He was still taking it all pretty damn well, for a guy still shrunk down to five inches and recently told his wife had been taken by goblins and that he now had to go into some screwy dimension with some Dominican girl who wasn't human in order to maybe possibly save his wife (and a baby he couldn't remember).

Poor, poor George.

Mayte pulled on her skin and slung the strap of her duffel bag across her chest. For safety reasons, she kept George at his five inches. He was clinging to San Antonio like a life preserver, kicking aside votives, as she zippered him in.

Being from The Labyrinth, and having the authority (direct from a Singer, natch) to help Sandra and George Underwood, getting back into The Labyrinth was no more trouble than saying, "Maïrakrallae of the Piskies from The Woods Next to the Woods with an Enviable Waterfall," and she always rolled her eyes at that, "wishes to return home."

No. No, she doesn't. But she's made up her mind and Doña Orozco hasn't raised a coward, damn it.

* * *

Robert jerked awake. Somewhere was wrong again. He stumbled from the den couch, his blankets tangled around his left foot, and tore open the door to Sarah's bedroom.

A thin, dark creature raised its head from beside Sarah's bed and blinked large, yellow eyes at him. It rustled a bit as if startled, then raised one hand, fingers (talons) splayed. As all of this happened, Robert was still trying to come to grips with the words thin, dark, and creature.

An impossible, cultured voice with a faint English accent said, "Oh my. I am afraid you were not meant to see this. Please accept my apologies as I, for lack of a better term under this stressing circumstance, knock you to sleep for, say, three days? That should be ample enough time." He paused, then added a very polite, "Sir."

Thin, dark, and creature. With a beak.

And then Robert slumped to the ground, where, at long, painful last, he slept.

* * *

The rocks were talking. If this was not enough to make George feel as if someone had flipped open his head and exchanged his brains for candy floss, there was also the fact that the rocks were talking with an English accent. Something ludicrous, like finding that every man, woman and child in England was suddenly, impossibly voiced by the cast of _Monty Python's Flying Circus._ He half expected some bulging, pink, Terry Gilliam-esque foot to drop out of the sky.

Rather muddled, that sky, now that he took a long, proper look at it. Muddy and tinged with oranges and yellows, a never-ending sunset. It did wonders for demolishing any sense of time George could have grasped onto. That was bad enough, without the talking rocks getting in on it too.

They were grating and rumbling away at Mayte in their curiously English accents, reminding George of nothing so much as two old men at a nursing home, spinning a pointless, rambling yarn to the first nurse fool enough to ask how they were feeling today.

George wandered over to a massive, felled tree trunk and sank onto it. He did not want to think. Didnotwantothink did. not. want. to. _think_.

"What is this place?" he had asked that talkative Dominican girl after she had returned him to his proper six feet and two inches.

"It's called The Labyrinth," she said with a shrug. "It's in a different dimension than Earth, yet part of Earth. It's…" She pulled her lips from left to right in thought. "Well, I don't really think about it a lot, you know? But it's as if some part of the world had gone screwy, so that this place exists on Earth, yet _apart _from Earth. You'll soon notice that a lot of stuff 'round here is close to stuff you're used to. Log cabins, rabbits in two-piece suits, bizarro creatures that talk with Cockney accents, all that kinda shit. It's a mad, mad, mad underground world, buddy." She pulled a Yorky bar (George recognized it as part of Sandra's pick-me-up secret candy stash) from her back pocket, tore off a large chunk, and gave him a chocolate smile before she began picking bits out with her tongue. "But don't worry 'bout any of that. Our priority is finding your wife."

Sandra. George knew she was in this place, this Labyrinth, but he could not for the life of him remember _why _she had come here. Mayte told him, and then he forgot. He asked Mayte again, embarrassed that he could not grasp onto something so important, but he would be damned if he could remember what Mayte had said. At one point, Mayte had patted his shoulder with genuine concern and said something, something about why he could not remember.

And he could not remember what she had said about that either.

I'm jinxed, he figured. Either that or this place as right mashes up me brain.

Mayte walked up to him after what seemed like hours of consultation with two, moss-crusted rocks. She dropped onto the tree branch beside him and racked her fingers through matted, curly hair.

"_Ca. Ra. Ja. Les_," she said. Then, "They didn't know nothing. They thought someone had worked powerful magic not too long ago on some rocks they used to know, but no deal. They couldn't even tell me where their rock friends were, though they _could_ remember every fuckin' piece of moss that'd ever grown on 'em."

"So wot now?"

"You shrink, I fly. Cover more ground that way."

There was something she was not telling him, something important. His stomach knotted into a painful lump whenever he thought about asking. He was afraid—terrified—of the answer.

Is Sandra still alive?

Mayte would not say, and, for now, George did not want to ask. He was a passenger, the man in the back of the police car as it pulled up to the local station so that he could identify his lost dog or vandalized Toyota (he would not, would _not_, think about morgues and identifying bodies). Mayte was the expert here. She would find Sandra, then get them both out, back to Kent.

And there was something else. That little bit George kept forgetting about.

He wedged in between Mayte's wooden statue of a saint dressed like a medieval priest and her junkyard of votives and he tried not to think too much as he rattled along with everything else in the duffel bag, Mayte moving with what George could tell was ridiculous speed.

"Sandra," he murmured, "babe, when I see you again, I'm goin' to give ye the longest kiss anyone's ever given you. You'll likely need one, love, and bloody hells bloody well know I'll need one too."

Time slipped away from him again at that point. He slept a bit, lulled by the constant sensation of movement. That he slept at all made him feel guilty whenever he drifted up to the surface. Sandra was in danger. Sandra might be—No. Not going there. But, goddamn it, George, this was serious. How could he sleep? He peered at his watch. The hour and minute hands were chasing each other like wild chickens. The date and year window had him at 15 November 2010. He leaned back against the less bumpy parts of Mayte's saint, felt his eyelids drooping again. Heartless bastard, his conscience hissed. A very quiet, hard part of him said, "If Sandra's dead, his staying awake won't make a ruddy difference, so lay off 'im."

Don't. Don't say that fucking word again. Sandra, babe, you're gonna be all right.

He must have fallen asleep again, because the next time he looked about, groggy, a large spot of saliva on the sleeve of his shirt, and with his right shoulder tingling, Mayte had stopped and cracked open the bag.

"Climb out," she whispered. "I may have found something."

Something was an arch built as the entrance to a cave. Lichen and thick clumps of moss tangled and spread as far as George, now his full size once more, could see. The musty, decaying odour of cold stone, underground water, and lime deposits roiled towards George, as if the cave had lungs with which to draw breath. He batted away cobwebs that hung like thinly tanned skins at the entrance. As he looked closely he could see that someone (something) had already torn an opening through them.

"Sandra…?"

Mayte lit a votive (although George never saw where she got the match from), then wrenched his poor brain sideways once more by getting it to hover in front of them. She frowned into the cave with distrust and intense hatred.

"Shards of glass," she muttered, scratching at her forearms. "This has that _pendejo_'s aura all over it." She shot George an odd, closed look. "You're so lucky you can't feel magic, mister. I've had it up to my skull with this jerk's glass shards."

The cave spread for a good mile before the rock walls gave way to crude, stone slabs. These became more refined as they moved on, one candle in front of them, another behind, so that large slabs became heavy, evenly sized blocks and these, in turn, grey, uniformly applied bricks. The walls curved more precisely now, so that instead of a cave they found themselves inside a tunnel. Mayte hissed as her sandalled foot sunk into a puddle of something gloopy. George gagged at the stench that slapped out, like hundreds of rotting, boiled eggs. He clamped a hand over his nose, glad for his work boots as Mayte hovered above the puddles, cursing whenever she misjudged their depth and dragged her toes through it. Whatever it was, it felt like congealed slime against George's jeans.

"And you're certain Sandra's in 'ere?"

"No. But it's the likeliest spot." She winced, as if something had bitten her. "Look, the guy I think got to her, he ain't good news. He leaves his stamp on every goddamn thing he does, and this place is full of it." She winced again. "Makes me think we're getting close." Her voice dropped off then, and George could see her muttering under her breath as she nearly doubled over.

She was in pain. And there was nothing he could do.

"Is it safe to call to her?"

Mayte sucked in a deep breath. "Yeah… sure," she said in a strained voice. "Don't feel… goblins. Can't smell anyone but us and," she sucked in more breaths, "holy _shit_," she exhaled with a shudder, "this… fucking… slime."

George cupped his hands over his mouth. "Sandra! Love? Can you _hear _me? Sandra!" He called her every couple or steps or so, trying not to notice that the gunk at their feet was getting higher. Lumps and solid bits bumped up against him now, like submerged logs or clumps of vegetation in a pond. George waded forward. "Sandra!"

The lead candle illuminated an irregularity a few feet away. George squinted. It looked like a gargoyle, or some sconce or niche. What looked like long strings of moss hung from the end of it. As he squelched forward, shooting backwards glances at Mayte, who hovered near the ceiling now, eyes screwed shut and teeth gritted against the pain, he could see that the irregularity was not grey stone. It had been painted, some pinkish shade of cream. In fact, it was not stone at all. In fact, George could feel something physical holding him back, slowing his steps. An insistent, panicky voice had kicked off in his head, and it said, "Oh God oh god don't let it be oh god don't let it be oh god oh god."

"Bastard," Mayte breathed.

George doubled over, the sight in front of him a punch to his gut. Vomit gathered at his throat, spilled out even as he willed himself to keep it together.

There were tears on her cheeks, dried salt marking where she had been crying for hours. The look on her eyes was a mixture of horror and the flooding relief of seeing a familiar face even after all hope is gone. Her shoulders protruded from the wall, naked and tinged grey where the rock had sunk in. Below her nose, her face was smooth. She had no lips, no mouth.

George pushed towards her, placed his palm against her cheek. "Fuck them," he whispered. "Sandra. Sandra." He repeated her name over and over, the warmth of her tears sliding along the grooves of his palm. "Fuck them for doing this to ye, love. Fuck them."

* * *

Jareth stirred awake. In the half-world between waking and the tail end of sleep, he could feel his body as nothing but a frail, bony human, mousy brown hair and curious, crooked features. How Linda could bear to have his ugly mug so close to hers was—was—

His eyes snapped open. He jerked his head to the left, shattering his earlier thoughts as he did so. He willed his hair down to his chin, peppered with blonde. For a few seconds, his left pupil contracted, both eyes blue and clear as he stretched his neck, shook all of his limbs firmly out of drowsiness. Then he relaxed, and the left pupil widened once more. He liked it, at the end of the day. It was his, and his alone. He liked that.

Linda was not beside him on the bed. Strange. He usually caught the moments when she woke first, even as she tried to be careful and quiet, and he pretended to still be asleep, his skin and thoughts humming pleasantly as he heard her bare feet slap over the floorboards, her shallow breaths as she dressed in silence, smelled her cool flesh in the morning calm. Sometimes he would crack open an eye, catch her as she fastened her brassiere, her shoulder blades jutting as she reached behind her for the clasp, cream shadows over her porcelain skin. This had been in The Wastes, on the hill, when he had weaved 1930 Berlin around them. Those had been good says.

He ran his hand now over the place she had been lying on. It was already cold. He stroked the spot, palm undulating as if across the dip and swell of her hips and thighs. He leaned forward, eyes closed, palm pressed to the bed, and kissed the sheets. His lips lingered.

The gesture surprised him.

He stared at his hand, as if unsure how it had come to be at the end of his arm.

"Your majesty," he heard Pam call from the other side of the bedroom door.

He drew the bed sheets around him, and they settled as a white dressing gown as he padded to the door. Magic, said a part of his brain that sloshed like ice melting into water, you could have simply moved yourself to the other side of this door. He noted the thought, decided to puzzle about it later. Pam was wringing his hands, wanting to know if his majesty was aware that somebody from aboveground had entered The Labyrinth.

"The breach was noted several hours ago, your majesty. We—the aides and myself—had thought that you would have already become aware of it. But as time passed and you did not…" He tailed off, flustered in his need for discretion. "Well, that is to say, his majesty was otherwise occupied, with her highness, and—Well—"

Jareth waved him into silence with an impatient jerk of his hand. He inclined his head, eyebrows knotting together in a disbelieving frown, as he felt along the currents and pathways of The Labyrinth.

"So he's come as well," he murmured after a while, his voice laced with a terrible quiet. "And I did not feel it. I was not told," he added, eyes turning towards Pam. Anger seethed along his skin.

"Your majesty, it is not often that—"

"Never mind," he snapped. "I'll take care of it." He was already only a faint outline as he pointed at Pam. "It is unwise to keep things from me, Advisor Royal. You will do well to remember that."

* * *

She stood by the reading tables, heartbreakingly small in cotton pyjamas with pink and yellow shooting stars on them. She lifted the corner of one book, peeked in at the ink splattered colophon. Her faces were animated and curious and unafraid. A chair thumped against the carpet as she pulled it out, tried to climb onto the table to get a better look out the window.

Linda walked forward, one arm raised in a maternal gesture of safety, as if her thoughts alone could keep the little girl from slipping off the table, the other in longing. She placed both hands on the table, steadied it.

"I'll open the window for you," she said.

The little girl turned around. Sarah, a faint, faraway voice said. Her name is Sarah. She looked at Linda doubtfully for a few seconds, then let out a flurry of strangled, happy sounds. She turned around on the table on her knees, her arms already around mommy's neck.

"Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy," she cried.

Linda held her, hands stroking her hair and her back. Bony, so bony, and frail, like a bird. So easy to break. So easy to hurt. Linda crushed her against her chest, lips pressed to the top of her head.

"Sarah," she said in a low voice close to her ear, "sweetie, listen to me. We can't talk yet. This room is no good for talking. It's a library, and we must be," she mimed shushing an unruly patron. "I'll take you to a place where we can talk, but you have to trust, mommy. All right?"

Sarah nodded, limp with relief in mommy's arms as she lifted her up from the reading table and carried her into the narrow, shadowed aisles between the bookshelves. They walked for a long time, turning corner after corner, bookshelf following high bookshelf, until Sarah forgot to be afraid. Whenever she opened her mouth, though, mommy said, "Hush." She did not say it unkindly, but it was still, "Hush." Sarah dropped her head onto mommy's shoulder and pouted in impatience as they crossed the library and came to a small door of dark, unadorned wood.

Now she could talk to mommy!

"Hush," mommy said, stroking her hair. "A bit further, sweetie."

A bit further. That was what mommy and daddy said whenever they drove down to New York City and the trip took forever and hundreds of days but daddy kept saying, "Just a bit further, sport, almost there" whenever Sarah fidgeted. It was gonna be days before she could talk to mommy. She grumbled in the back of her throat, burrowing her forehead into the dip between mommy's neck and shoulders.

Linda smiled, even in spite of the anxious dread in the pit of her stomach. Jareth missed nothing. It would not be long before he realized a child had been brought to the castle. Pam had chosen the right moment to deliver a report to Jareth, had assured Linda that it was serious and pressing enough that Jareth would be caught up in it for a long time.

"It is a matter that comprises the very future of The Labyrinth," Pam said. "It has been occupying his majesty's time—and, I daresay, thoughts—for days. This should provide the perfect opportunity for you to meet with your daughter. I dared not cast a dampening spell on the library, for fear that his highness would detect it, but I can, and will, deliver all reports from here until your daughter is safely aboveground once more with as many words as possible."

Wood and painted stucco hallways gave way to sand coloured brick, Linda's steps quickening at the thought that, somehow, Jareth would sense her faster if she stayed long within their private corridors. She pushed open a door and stood on a staircase. Sarah shifted against her, interest trumping boredom at last. She looked around at all the serpentine, cascading, impossible staircases surrounding them in all directions. "Wow," she said before Linda could hush her. She bounced in excitement as Linda kept a firm grip and pushed forward, now sideways, now right side up, now (to Sarah's distressingly audible delight) upside down.

Keep your mind clear, she thought. Don't think of the destination. Merely push forward and hope.

"Sweetie," she whispered to Sarah, "I need you to cling tightly to mommy, okay? Hold on tight, as tight as you can, and don't let go of mommy, no matter what. Okay?"

She knew her arms would grow slack as her thoughts emptied, hoped to God that Sarah would not let go of her neck. Then, she forced herself to push those thoughts away and began to walk and walk, using the echoing tap of her shoes as a numbing repetition. Things began to grow fuzzy and drop away, undercut by a painful pressure near the centre of her chest that eventually faded as well.

Walk, just walk. Just walk.

A voice came to her from several rooms away. "Mommy," it said. It pulled on her neck, and she came to full consciousness. Her breath hitched as she thought of having to start over again, but then she saw that she was no longer surrounded by sand coloured bricks, but by cold, grey slate. The breathing, roiling darkness ate away at the far end of the corridor.

"Trust mommy," she said to Sarah, searching out her eyes.

Sarah's eyes were bright with fear. She clung to mommy's neck, unable to look away from the darkness ahead. "Are we going in there? It's dark." She strangled a cry at the back of her throat as mommy tried to turn her face away from it. She could not look away from it. If she did not keep an eye on it, monsters would crawl out of it. She had to keep the monsters at bay. She had to keep looking at it.

"We have to go in there, Sarah," Linda said in the firm, reasonable voice Sarah knew meant no argument and no amount of tears would change her mind. "We will be safe in there. We can talk."

"In there?" Sarah whimpered.

"I'm sorry, sweetie." She tightened her arms around her, making sure to cover her back as much as she could. "Put your face close to mine, sweetie. I'm here. I've got you, and I won't let anything hurt you. You have to trust me."

Tears stood at the corners of her eyes, liquid green now with fear. But she nodded. She burrowed closer into mommy, as if she could merge their bodies together. Hot, wet breaths beat against Linda's cheek, shuddering and intensifying as she stepped forward and closer to the darkness. Linda tilted her head over Sarah's, murmured kisses at her as they crossed from grey slate to black nothingness.


	8. Act VIII

**Act VIII**

George wanted a drink. He wanted a drink so badly his throat felt like paper, his insides hollowed and waiting. He still felt queasy from vomiting, his hand shaking as he picked bits, chunks and dried spittle from the corners of his mouth. A drink. One fucking drink. Two, no three, no, damn it all, a whole fucking six-pack and then some.

He could not bring himself to look at Sandra, knew that was breaking her heart.

Mayte was standing close to her, one palm pressed to the wall as she spoke in a gnarled, crackling whisper to the stones. Whenever George turned away from her, she seemed to glow in his peripheral vision, the faint, fractured ripples created by a sunlight pool against rock or concrete.

"Not in pain anymore?" George said from the opposite side of the tunnel.

"Dampening spell," Mayte said. "We've found her, so there's no need for me to keep my channels open to this piece'a shit's abuse."

"Piece of shit is right."

God, just one drink. A man had to have at least one drink. This fucked up stuff deserved a drink. Lower face as smooth and creamy as her cheeks, as if nothing had ever been there, as if she had been born without a mouth. Could have torn it out, a voice said, you could have walked in on a wife with her lower jaw ripped out. Count your blessings. She still has a jaw. She still has her fucking jaw with no fucking mouth and you ain't got no ruddy beer to bash this all away with.

He drew a hand under his nose, heard some sad sack of a man sob somewhere down the tunnel, echoing above his head.

"I'm sorry," Mayte's voice said. She pushed away slime slicked lumps as she made her way towards him. "I'm sorry, George. That spell's too strong. I can't pull her out, not without hurting her."

"So she's fuckin' _stuck_ like that?"

"Look, I'll figure something out. I just gotta—"

"No! You figure somethin' out _now_! You pull Sandra _outta_ that wall and you give 'er back 'er _face_, you fuckin'—"

"—ain't gonna lead nowhere, you asshole! If I try any old spell I might rip her from that wall in fucking _pieces_, okay!? You _want _that, huh? _Do_ ya, _maricon_? Huh!? I can _do _it! I'll just grab onto her shoulders and fucking _pull_—"

"—they took her fuckin' MOUTH!"

Slime slapped Mayte's face as George banged his fists down, mouth twisted into a grotesque wedge. He stumbled, steadied himself with splayed fingers against the tunnel. Beyond Mayte's still shape, he could see Sandra's wet cheeks, the pleading look on her ruined face. "I'm so sorry, Sandra," he choked. "Babe, you gotta believe me. If I had _any _way'ah fixin' all of this…"

Mayte sloshed a few paces away from him. She moved her hand, as if plucking something out of a box, and held up a handkerchief. She thrust it towards George. "Wipe your wife's tears, idiot," she muttered. She left him at it, ignoring the way the tunnel shuddered with the echoes of his sobs.

Sandra's eyes held George's as he worked, the pockets of flesh beneath them bunching up in what George hoped was a smile, however tremulous or uncertain a smile. It was hard to read her expressions, and George was struck by the absurdity of how similar sadness and happiness were when gnawed down to just eyebrows and eyes, with no ability to involve one's cheeks. Sandra could manipulate the skin beneath her eyes, but she could not produce true laugh lines, so that one eye always remained wider open than the other. Despite the weight in his stomach, George found himself smiling at that.

"You do look a bit of a fool, old girl," he said. "Are you tellin' me you love me again? God, you told me, on the phone. I never guessed. You headed out 'ere, didn't you, afterwards? An' they did this to you. _Why _did you come here?"

Mayte told him, and he forgot as soon as he turned towards Sandra once more.

"I'm sorry. I jest can't seem to grab onto what you're saying, Mayte."

"It's okay. Dunno why I keep trying to tell you." Then, in an odd, stiff voice. "Oh crap. Oh no, please, don't do this."

She rose into the air even before the words were completely out of her mouth, tossing frantic looks around her. Her feet kicked out, plops of slime striking the walls, one sandal dropping down with a wet pop below her. Her arms jerked and convulsed toward her face, fingers clawed as she tried to hold them back. She muttered and cursed in a language George could not understand, sweat popping out along her brow and sliding down into her T-shirt. She began to whimper as her fingers dug into her cheeks, crawling like spider legs up towards her eyes.

"Sandra," George said. "Close your eyes."

He shielded his own, blocking out the sight of Mayte pulling at the skin below her eyes, the sound of something wet and living ripping away. The veins along his temples strained under the force of gritting his teeth, willing his ears to block out the sounds of Mayte screaming, flesh tearing off her. _Thunk _and pieces dropped into the slime. Through the slits in his fingers, George could see something brown and bloodied sinking beneath the surface.

Shite oh shiteohshite ohshite ohshite.

Light struck the tunnel walls, a raw red that flared and then died out to black as something struck the tunnel wall beside George. A wave of slime grappled up his shirt as the something (Mayte) (oh fuck, Mayte) landed with a hollow splash.

The sound of something moving across the slime, the gurgled sound of slime drawing back across the tunnel floor, and then a soft, lilting voice. "Everybody in one tunnel, like proverbial rats. All the small, scurrying things, petty little English, and so many pounds of flesh have I to press. Oh, that I were a raven, I would have their eyes for a secret and a story never heard."

* * *

"Mommy?" Sarah said. "Why are you dressed like that? Are you in a play?"

Linda looked down at herself. She was still in black velvet and tulle, intricate embroidery beneath her scooped neck and down in a triangle towards her belly. Her hair wound like feet of coiled rope on the ground. Once, it had told Linda that she was regal and powerful. Now it was the contents of a doll's miniature chest.

"Yes honey," Linda said. "I've been in a play for a long time."

"Why didn't you tell daddy? He's very sad. He's looking for you. He forgot me at school. He forgot. And he burned the ravioli. I threw rocks at it."

"Sarah…?"

Sarah burrowed deeper into Linda's skirt, knees hovering over her nose as she kept her legs crossed at the ankles and lifted up from the floor, so that Linda could only see the top of her head and a sliver of her profile. "At the owl, mommy," she said, as if it were an ordinary fact. "It follows me, but I scared it away." She pointed at a shelf across the room. "What's that?"

The room was small and round, plain, white plaster walls, a dusty floor and no windows. By the light, empty feeling that hovered around her head and ears, Linda could tell that they were in a tower, probably several stories above ground. The voice (voices) (echoes) in the darkness had been strangely soothing this time around, crackling, tuning and re-tuning themselves around her as they hovered like radio signals lost among mountains, several feet away from her and right by her ears.

"Linda Cornell Williams the Goblin Queen no more always never," they said to her, while other voices said, "Sarah" and "Williams, daughter progeny offspring of Linda and Robert" and the deep voice like Jareth's said, "Linda has a little girl."

"I need a safe place," Linda said. "Away from Jareth, away from anyone who might overhear us. Can you do this?"

The voices rippled into static, sideways slipping dance steps in a jangle of loops and distorted frequencies. "Little scurrying feet have they could have may yet become yes that there is could be was a place Jareth Goblin King _he _will not think of suspect in arrogance thoughts never to occur perhaps realize where they could hide." The deep voice weaved towards the surface like the wrench of an antenna finally hitting on a strong signal. "There _is_ a place, Linda. Take one step forward." The voice shuddered and split into harmonizing echoes once more. "Step walk into towards away from across the white all colours of a rainbow in a room it may may not keep them her two females safe in danger shielded from him."

"That's just freaky, mommy," Sarah whispered. "Make it shut up."

If the voices could smile, teeth would have flashed like snow between TV channels across the darkness.

Linda stepped forward, and walked into the white, empty room.

There had been nothing within it as she had sat on the floor with Sarah on her lap. But now there was a warped, wooden shelf crusted with sloppy layers of rust paint, so that fat, overlapping tears of excess paint gathered at its angles and down its sides. Linda lifted Sarah aside and moved towards it. Seven shelves, with various items placed on them with the haphazard carelessness of a garage toolshed. Linda's fingers hovered over them as she moved from shelf to shelf.

Spheres of all shapes and sizes were crowded into cardboard boxes along the bottom shelf. Some were covered so thickly with dirt that they resembled rocks, others had only just begun to gather dust, while the ones at the top of the pile were still clean and clear. Tiny figures hung suspended within them: dancers and horses, houses, tools and automobiles, hansom cabs. Linda picked up one of the spheres. Within it was a tiny replica of the Playhouse Theatre at the West End, where Linda had made her debut soon after she had wished for Jareth to make her a successful actress. She set it down on the pile, like a dreamer who forgets the connection between one thought and the other within seconds, moved on to the second shelf. Books and papers, stacked in yellowed, cramped towers. The shelf above had glass jars filled with formaldehyde and labelled in careful, small block letters. Linda looked at a rat (Jack, the label said) and a small, white cat (Angie) and then she caught sight of swollen, severed fingers and something soft and spongy looped several times around itself. Her eyesight jumped to the next shelf. More jars, bigger, a heart and a collapsed lung and small, ochre bits like dead skin that drifted within the formaldehyde. She moved on. Liquid warped cardboard boxes filled with dried, rotting fruit, the buzz and scurrying bumps of flies rattling within the far recesses of the shelf. The top tier was a collection of shadow boxes: wide staring eyes against bright blue and green and fuchsia backgrounds, a pig snout, a pair of fresh, pink lips against tanned skin dyed red and orange.

"Mommy? What's in there?"

"Sarah, don't look at this shelf."

"What's—"

"_Don't_ look at this shelf! Face the other wall. Now!"

She bent down and picked up a yellowed notebook page on the ground. Off-centre was a crude, carbon sketch of a house with two windows and a porch. The same careful, small block letters from the jars: _The house she asked me to build for her. Move in together. 19 August 1977._

Jareth.

"There's something over here too," Sarah said. "I'm trying not to look."

"Don't look," Linda said. She folded the notebook paper and jammed it down the front of her dress.

Sarah backed away from a painted wooden chest carved with red hearts and green pines and brown mountains and gingerbread house arches in primary yellow. A child's toy chest. It made Linda think of Scandinavia and Germany and Norway, cold, dark places where children disappeared into forests and bogs and mist. She instructed Sarah to stand away, then eased back the lid.

She looked down in silence for a long while.

"It's a baby," Sarah said from far behind her.

"It's George's and Sandra's baby," Linda said.

Her arms moved and she picked it up, a heavy, quiet thing with muted eyes. He waved his fist in a lazy half-circle and gazed up at Linda. A smile tugged at one corner of his lips as he saw Sarah.

"That's Baby Joe," Sarah said. "He was at Cousin George's. How come Baby Joe's here?"

"A monster took him, Sarah."

"I thought a monster had taken you, but you were here. And I thought a monster took me last night, but he just put me in the room where you said hush and I found you. Is a monster going to bring daddy?"

"No, honey. It's a cruel monster." She hugged Joe to her chest. She cooed at him and made believe—if only for now—if only for a little while—that she did not understand what any of this meant. Jareth, her mind said. Jareth, Jareth Jareth. "It's cruel," she said. "It's just cruel."

Sarah sat beside her mommy. She shook Baby Joe's limp fist, then burrowed into the folds of mommy's dress.

* * *

Pam stood by the throne room's window. He clasped his hands behind his back and waited. There was nothing else for him to do.

On the Goblin King's throne, Cecile sat pruning her feathers, clucking in a hushed voice like a child playing a game by herself. She twitched her head in Pam's direction every now and then, but he was still just standing by the window whenever she looked.

After a few minutes, he rang a little bell and a goblin rushed in with high tea. Pam selected a raspberry tort and a saffron tea bag. Lemon, no sugar or milk. A tiny silver spoon tinked against the side of his saucer after he had finished squeezing his tea bag and mixing in the lemon. He took a sip, nodded to the goblin that all was satisfactory. The goblin clattered out with his cart, a tea cosy on its head.

It was good tea. The raspberry tort could have done with less sugar, but the crust was not soggy. Pam dusted his fingers after he was done. He set the tea cup and the tort's crumb filled doily on their silver serving tray, and another goblin took this away at Pam's ringing of the bell.

Then he gazed out of the window once more.

Cecile grew bored and flapped down from the throne. She threw one last glance at Pam over her shoulder, then waddled out into the next room.

Pam tapped his taloned thumbs together behind his back.

And he waited.

And waited.

* * *

Soft gooeyness. Mayte drifted in soft gooeyness. Chief among her thoughts was, "Oh, yuck, it's like floating in stomach bile." This was closely followed by, "That _hurt_," and on that thought's heels came, "I really really _really _hate that fucked up fucking fucker Jareth." She added a few more explicitives as she swam upwards, the gunk around her dyed a nice, sturdy red.

She burst out into the tunnel in a spurt of slime she dearly hoped would hit Jareth square within his nose. She grasped onto the ceiling, glaring down at Jareth below.

He smiled at her as if he thought she was just delightful. "Hullo," he said.

Not quite what she expected, this guy. She had pegged him for the doom and gloom type, some pale creep in black leather, the Halloween-all-year-round type, who sashayed around in capes with pointed collars and tried so damn hard to out-demon the demons. Her lip curled in derisive surprise as she took in his shoulder length, brown hair and blue, V-neck sweater and cargo pants and, holy flopping mackerels, no shoes.

"It's rude to stare," he said. He twirled his index finger like a lasso and sent her hurtling towards the far wall. Hard. Bones getting re-arranged hard. An invisible finger smudged her in for good measure. "I keep doing this hard enough," he said in a pleasant, helpful way, "and something might pop. Your head, perhaps." He lifted her away with a thought. "Piskie. Helpful to humans. Helpful to _these _humans?" An invisible thumb wrenched her chin and face in the direction of George and Sandra. "Those ones right there?"

"Yup," Mayte said. Jareth slammed her back against the wall in a multi-coloured parade of bursts and spilled paint buckets, then let her drop.

"I see." He raised his arms to shoulder height and beckoned with his hands. George and Sandra both snapped their heads towards him. "Sandra came for her brat, that I know. George, I gather, came for Sandra? He couldn't have come for the baby. My spell is still on him. What, pray, did the three of you think you were going to do?"

All around logical question, that one. The kind that made Mayte want to bite people. She had no answer, of course. All of her plans thus far had mostly included the word "find." Find Linda, find the Underwoods, find Sandra. What, exactly, came after "find" she had never been too clear on. She figured it would come to her as she went along.

Find the Underwood's baby, she supposed.

But then what?

"Exactly," Jareth said.

"I'm here for Linda Williams," Mayte said. "You brought her here unlawfully."

"And how does that tie up with the human parents, little piskie?"

Sandra and George were listening. Jareth was doing a good job at pretending that he didn't give half a chewed up penny, but their eyes were already shifting through bits of information they recognized.

"You took their child unlawfully too," Mayte said. "They don't belong to you, Linda or the Underwood kid. By rights, they—" Dishes cracked and shattered in her eardrums as he slammed her once twice three and four successive times against the wall. She heard George shout, "Leave 'er alone!" and found enough room within the din in her head to think he was a pretty swell guy, for a muddled human.

Then George did something really stupid. Kinda noble and on the brave side of things, given he was the only one not broken or bleeding or both at Jareth's hands, but stupid nonetheless.

He rushed forward, shoulder lowered like some charging rugby player, roaring a distraction, and slammed straight into Jareth. The impact—and, by God, the sheer surprise of it—sent both Jareth and George sprawling into the slime. Enough time for Mayte to push away from the wall and speed towards Jareth. She took hold of the hair along the back of his neck and sank four fine rows of sharp teeth right between his shoulder blades. She held on, claws digging into his skin, as he cried out in pain and reached back reflexively to tear her off. She bit down again.

I tear your skin, I tear your skin, I _tear_ your _skin _right off in frantic joy!

As he tossed her away (and she hit the wall with all the finesse of a swatted mosquito), she took comfort in the fact that she had drawn blood. It lay on her tongue like a bag of rusted nails.

Some of it was hers, true, but she could spot the gashes where Jareth was bleeding.

She saw George attack Jareth again, a blow with both hands joined to the back of his head, before Jareth could pull his thoughts sufficiently together to use magic on either George or Mayte. Sandra jerked and heaved from her place at the wall, the upper half of her face distorted with hatred and malicious glee.

Mayte sped towards Jareth again.

Jareth crawled out onto the dry tunnel floor on his belly, slimed fingers like fish flapping for breath on the cobblestones, George floundering behind him, trying to grab hold of his legs. Jareth tossed his head to the right and sent George crashing into a wall. Then he slipped and clambered to his knees, bared his teeth at Mayte. Glass shards gathered with the metallic, insect scurrying of swords. They shot forward in a screeching mass. Mayte felt them along her veins and stared at the idea of the thought of getting out of their way.

_Virgen Santisima_, she thought, and found it pointless that she might go out thinking the name of a saint in a religion she did not really believe in because if places like The Labyrinth existed then religion was pretty much open to the interpretation of, "No such fucking thing," unless it was the other way around and _Madre de Dios_ she really _was _gonna go out thinking this stuff how pointless how utterly point—

As it turned out, she banished instead.

* * *

Linda walked into the throne room with the steady, purposeful footsteps of a queen leading a small army, a chubby baby cradled in her right arm, Sarah holding on to her left. The relief on Pam's face at the sight of mother and daughter safe dissolved into a few mental steps back as he saw the baby.

"My lady," he began.

"Did you know about this?" she said. "Did you know Jareth had this baby locked in a box?"

Pam made several false starts, his voice like glue on his throat, before he said, "M-my lady, it—it is our nature, I am afraid. Lost or forgotten or abandoned children are, within the rules that bind The Labyrinth to the world aboveground, lawfully ours. As is anyone or anything that is lost or forgotten or abandoned. It must appear exceedingly cruel to—"

"This is George and Sandra Underwood's son. He was not lost or forgotten or abandoned. His parents have been looking for him, devastated for him. They were told it was better to think of him as dead. What right do you have to him? By your own rules, Advisor Royal?"

Pam stood with his hands slack at his sides. He stared at the baby, then at Sarah. She looked at him without fear or pity, just kept her eyes on him, an observer watching an event unfold, that she might tell everyone. Pam raised his head to meet Linda's gaze.

He was still the Advisor Royal, but something had fallen away within him. It made him look taller, bonier, gave a watery quality to his large, yellow eyes.

"I did not know," he said in a quiet voice. "But if the child is here unlawfully, then it is within his parents rights to claim him once more."

Linda let the thoughts in her head chase themselves about, waiting for the right one to follow. She ran after thoughts of George and Sandra, far away in England, of her husband climbing the steps at the flat in Kent. She chased down a long, long corridor, suggestions like the aftershocks of static in her mind's eye. She found the thought she needed and said, "Jareth is fond of the word wish. Anything I wished, he said, he would give to me, and so everything I wished was done. I wished for him to show me the true nature of this castle and, against his own wishes, he did.

Is he bound to human wishes? Is he bound to _my_ wishes?"

"It is—that is—I mean—" Tar. Pam could smell tar again, the weight of it up to his knees now. "He… would—might—find a way around it, my lady. But, yes, he is bound by it. The Labyrinth and everything within it, including Jareth, including even the Singers, came to be by the will of humans aboveground. They created us, and they feed us. Without them, without their dreams or wishes or desires or cruelty, we would fall into greater disrepair than you see now."

"So I have power over him?"

"Some. My lady."

She kissed the top of Joe's head. He smelled of dust and old, cool wood and, faintly, like the undertow of a river, Jareth's skin. She took her hand away from Sarah and held Joe out in both her arms.

"I wish for this child to be returned to its proper home."

A few seconds, the strain of breath against lungs, and a frightened, wide-eyed piskie appeared in the throne room. She threw up her arms to cover her face, hovered like that for a moment, curled up and miserable, then, as nothing appeared to be happening to her, lowered her arms with a swirl of embarrassed pinks and a confused hodgepodge of browns colliding within her tiny body.

"Can't be dead," she said, her voice the crackle of dead leaves underfoot. "This place looks like some dirty, empty fort." She looked from Pam to Joe to Sarah and, finally, back up to Linda. "Oh," she said. "By the Pope's fucking pointy hat, _bendito sea Dios_. You're _La Nena_ Linda. I found you." She paused, something like disbelief and melancholy and tiredness stumbling across her face and then away. "I found you. I actually found you." Her eyes went to Joe once more. "Is that the Underwood's kid?"

Sarah said, "It's a pixie," and Pam said, "Madam, I object to some of the language you have used when in the presence of her ladyship, and my own person, as Advisor Royal, and most certainly within this throne room," as well as many other things Linda did not hear as she murmured, "La nena linda…?"

But that would have to wait. She held out Joe to the piskie hovering by Jareth's throne, kicking it and lobbying spit balls at it while she blazed red and yellow and a nasty, blinding orange. As Linda held Joe out to her, it struck her—not without some embarrassment—that the piskie was too small to carry a human baby.

"Please take him home," she said anyway.

The piskie looked up from pissing on Jareth's throne (Pam looked as if she had been pissing into his own mother's mouth), brow ridges raised. She pushed up to peer at Joe. He frowned at her, then—with no warning—burst into babbled nonsense that sounded almost like a happy giggle. He blew bubbles and raspberried and gurgled spit down his rounded chin, the piskie nodding as if he were saying the most intelligent things in the world. Finally, he settled into a low sort of mumble, like chewing mushy food with no teeth, and the piskie patted his head.

"Yeppers, this is the kid. It all checks out. Kent, George, Sandra, creep trailing glass."

She held out her small hands like twigs for Joe, and, as Linda handed him over with a great deal of trepidation, an odd thing happened. Linda could not understand why she had ever thought the piskie could not carry him, because he fit perfectly within her arms. She held him awkwardly, with half his body threatening to spill off the side of her arms, the maiden aunt who has never had time nor interest for kids, but he seemed happy.

"Linda," she said. "I came to get you too. Only…" Her skin swirled into deep purples of disappointment. "I don't know how. There's a spell on you. A powerful one."

"I know. I can't leave The Labyrinth."

"Jareth got to you too, huh?"

Something within Linda echoed with pain.

"I can't leave with you," she said, "but you can return Joe to his parents. Take him home."

The piskie made as if to say something, then changed her mind. "Okay. Take him home, right? Kent? Is that the request?"

"Yes."

She sighed in relief, then brightened to the vibrant green of a newly unfurled leaf. "You got it, Linda." With that, she jostled Joe in her arms, shot past everyone in the throne room and down the stairs.

Linda listened to the faint, burning rustle of the piskie cutting through air currents. She thought of a Londonderry diner and a Dominican waitress. _La Nena _Linda. She did not think it was a coincidence, although she doubted she would ever have a chance to ask and make certain.

"Where is she going?" Sarah said. She peered out the throne room door, following the blue and green shadows cast by the piskie on the stairwell.

"Hopefully, to Kent," Linda said.

"A Singer," Pam said. He straightened from wiping Jareth's throne clean. "As a piskie, she is bound to aid the humans she has pledged to help. In her case, I suspect, the babe's parents. She does not, however, have the full authority to exit The Labyrinth. She requires the aid of a Singer." He dropped the rag he had been using, and it vanished in mid-air as if swallowed by an invisible fish. "By the by, it is now my unpleasant duty to report that it will not be long before His Majesty realizes the child has left The Labyrinth. He will not be pleased. And he should not see her," his eyes swivelled towards Sarah.

"You're the monster who took me away," she said.

"Quite correct, young lady. And I should be the mons—the one to take you back. However…" He gazed at Linda, eyes flicking across her features quickly, as if he wanted to memorize her face. When he spoke, he sounded tired. "My lady, I regret that we are monsters, as your daughter says. Neither of you, I am afraid, is safe within The Labyrinth. Your Ladyship, regrettably, may not leave. If a Singer cannot break Jareth's spell on you, then no one here can save Jareth. But your daughter can and must return. I fear… I fear…"

Dread pulsed within Linda as well, a rising, towering swell over her shore. She searched out Sarah's hand, found it, and held onto it tightly, least she drown.

* * *

His left arm was broken. Fractured. Something that sent a stab of pain down his side and between his eyes whenever he tried to move it. George clasped his right arm over it, stood with his back against the tunnel wall, slime up to his thighs. It had occurred to him a while back that it was not slime. It was human, some kind of human liquid. Or liquids. The lumps, he reasoned, might be limbs or bones or organs, something like that. It occurred to him as well that this might somehow be tied to the tunnel walls, to the bricks digging into Sandra's flesh.

He would not allow the thought to go any further than that.

Across from him, the man who had ripped off Mayte's skin and flung him against the wall (and, he was certain, had taken Sandra's mouth) stood in an uneasy half-slump. Slime clung to the tips of his hair, his clothes drenched with it. He drew his arm under his nose, then slicked his hair away from his face.

"She's not dead," he said. "That damn piskie's still alive. And…" He gritted his teeth in a snarl. "She's got _him_."

He started to raise his right arm, then froze, like a wild animal at the crack of a gun. His fingers curled into a fist, and he roared with frustration. George was pushed back against the wall, rasps like tiny grains of hard sand brushing his skin, slime slapping up to his chin and striking the walls as the man roared again. As the outburst subsided, George edged towards Sandra, stood as close to her face as he could.

The man spoke. "You'll be glad to know, Sandra, that the little blob is now back in Kent. You'll be less glad to know that, as _you _could not have possibly wished him back there, you are _not_."

He motioned as if yanking a curtain back. With a wet, squelching noise, Sandra dropped forward from the wall. George's arm shot white agony into his eyes as he caught her, struggling under her weight and his pain and the slime and Sandra's arms scrambling to hold on to him. A moment of shock and incomprehension, and then George's arms tightened around Sandra's back, face buried into her hair and shoulder.

"Love," he said, over and over, until the word made no sense to him.

"Count yourselves lucky, the both of you," the man said. "The babe I could have used, but I don't give a damn what you two do. Bugger off for all I care." With that, he turned to go.

"Wait one bloody minute!" George said.

The man stopped, his back to George, his head half-turned and tilted forward, as if he could not believe what he had heard. "Wait? For what, George? What do you think I owe you?" He turned his body half-way, so as to take in George and Sandra as they stood in a wet, shivering huddle. "Kent? Is that it? Or your wife's mouth? Your child was returned aboveground through no doing of your own. I no longer have what you want, and there is nothing I want from you. You have no bargaining power, either of you. I owe you _nothing_."

George saw Sandra lunge forward, pushing him back with her momentum. He saw the splinter of bone gripped in her hand, saw her arm rise. He knew, as she closed the gap between her and the man, that she would stab him. Her arm rose high above her head, came down and forward, and George knew that the splinter ripped through and into the man's left eye. He saw the bone plunge in, heard a sickening, broken sound, like slicing through raw flesh, saw the arch formed by vitreous humour and aqueous humour and bright red fingers of blood, and yet he saw nothing. The images in his mind skipped and blurred, so that one moment Sandra raised her arm, and the next the man had doubled over, screaming until his voice cracked, clutching at the left side of his face.

David, said George's own voice within his head. Your friend David Jones. He stole your son, Joe. He made you forget.

David's back jerked. "Damn you," he said, as his back jerked again, and George realized he was trying to pull out the splinter. "Damn you, woman." A sliver of bone dropped to the ground, bloodied with gore, and David glared up at Sandra, the fingers of his left hand viscous and stained red as he pressed the curve of his palm over his mangled left eye. "How dare you?"

"Return us to Kent," Sandra said, cold and impassive. "You _will _return us to Kent."

George stumbled forward. David was in a pitiful state, his hair matted, bangs splattered with blood, his clothes crumpled and so common place. His bare feet tumbled close together as he staggered under the pain radiating from his face, and George knew that he could no longer focus properly because of that pain. He remembered David Jones, who had never looked that way. His mate. Davey. He wondered where Davey had really gone, that last night George had waved goodbye to him from his flat's front door, before the night he had returned trailing glass and sniffing around for his son. George wondered if there really was any such thing as a soul. He no longer thought the man stumbling before him and Sandra was David. This was something cruel and dangerous, something old and unstable. It smiled, blood cracking where deep laugh lines formed around its mouth.

"Are you going to stab me as well, George?"

"No."

He held out his hand for Sandra to take. She crossed over to him without even trying to glance at the creature with David's face.

Sandra said, "You will return us to Kent, goblin." Then, "You have no more power over us, and this is over."

The creature dropped its left hand.

Where its gored left eye should have been, George could see only a rent of darkness, as if something where ripping through the creature like paper, flame eating through a cardboard doll. The rent grew and spread, until nothing remained of the creature at all, and George and Sandra where standing in Joe's bedroom.

"Joe," Sandra gasped. She rushed towards his crib, straightened, clutching a baby in her arms. Their baby. "Joe," Sandra whispered. "Oh, Joe, my Joe, my little Joe."

George dropped back against a dresser. "Let's tell the police," he said. "Mess with their 'eads."


	9. Act IX

**Act IX**

The darkness spread out behind her. Linda felt the length of it, unmeasurable, like a room filled with silent spectators. They waited, and she waited as well. She sat at the place where the grey light of the hidden corridor met absolute black, her back against the darkness as if it were a wall. Emptiness crawled like a slow itch along the skin over her spine and shoulder blades, but the fractured, grey shadows of the vanishing corridor soothed her. She could think clearly about Sarah in her pink and yellow pyjamas, her little white hand in Pam's as the Advisor Royal led the three of them back to the library.

"Something has happened," Pam said in a low voice after he had locked the door. "Jareth is hurt." Jareth, not His Highness or His Majesty. Pam gave the impression of crumbling into his clothes. He moved slowly, with careful, measured actions, as if afraid of being overhead, of giving away their position. "He's weak. Me must seize this opportunity to summon a Singer and get your daughter to safety."

He offered to do it.

"You must stay at the throne room," Linda said. She set out the bone and bowl for the summoning. "If Jareth comes, he must find you at your post, or he'll suspect something." When Pam did not move, Linda summoned a reassuring smile she did not feel. "We'll be fine. I know how to do it. It might scare Sarah, but it has to be done."

She pulled a bone pin from her hair and laid it out on a reading table. She got down on her knees, pushing her flowing skirts aside in irritation, and snapped the bone in two. As she drew a circle, she heard water slosh into the bowl. Pam's magic. Neither had thought to fill the bowl with water as they had fled the throne room. The bone halves dropped in with the snap of surface tension breaking. Linda took the bone pin.

"I will do what I can," Pam murmured. "You know that?"

"Yes."

Blood swirled into the bowl. The summons were spoken, and the library filled with red light and a slow pulse of blood like star matter.

Sarah stared at the summoned Singer, her lips drawing back and down as she swallowed. Her fingers dug into Linda's palm as the Singer spoke directly into their heads. She trembled, and Linda hoisted her into her arms, lowering Sarah's head over her chest gently as she stroked her hair. The Singer noted Sarah's fear as one notes that it is Monday, and took no more heed of it.

"What does she wish?"

"Return my daughter to Londonderry, New Hampshire," Linda said. "Keep her safe from Jareth."

"Outside of The Labyrinth, it may not protect a human child. But the child may be returned to her home. Is that what she wishes?"

Linda closed her eyes. Do not be afraid. She kissed the top of Sarah's head. "Yes. That is my wish."

"Then her wish may be granted."

Sarah whimpered as fire drew out a door once more on the library wall, although her grip on her mommy's neck lessened as the Singer dissolved and the familiar, cream orange shadows of the library returned.

Linda shifted her memories then, as she sat by the darkness, in the corridor. She did not wish to remember how frightened Sarah had been of crossing through the portal. But fragments of memory flashed through her mind's eye even as she tried to still her thoughts into black, the images distorted, as if Linda were standing several feet above Sarah, the library flat and smudged into featureless brown. Sarah's mouth like a Greek mask for tragedy, tears falling down her cheeks without shame, her skin mottled with ugly red blossoms.

"Goodbye, sweetie," she whispered now. "Be safe." She closed her eyes. "Be safe." Praying to a deity, willing the darkness behind her to give her daughter the protection she could not. She did not know if the darkness could hear or understand or grant this request, but Linda could not seem to stop herself from repeating the words. "Be safe. Be safe."

"Where will you go now?" Pam asked, after the door and Sarah had disappeared.

He gathered the spell instruments and dropped them into thin air. His arms dropped to his sides, and it struck Linda that Pam was a very old creature. The low library lights curved within the edges of his eyes, drawing out the leathery mass of wrinkles that framed them.

"I know a safe place," Linda said. Then, "What's going on, Pam?"

"I…" He looked about him distractedly, as if he could not believe the notion of a library or of Linda, or of himself. "I can _feel _Jareth. He is… angry. Hurt. I used to think of him as a rather eccentric king, you know. But this is… I—" He reached out abruptly and grasped Linda's hands. "I will do what I can, my lady. I will keep you safe. This _must _blow over. You are still his queen, whatever else might have happened. We only need wait now."

Linda freed her hands gently. "I know a safe place," she said again. "Thank you, Advisor Royal."

She pictured Pam now, standing with his hands clasped behind his back by the throne room window. She tried to picture him having tea, fussing with his tea bag. She tried to pretend it was just another day, Jareth otherwise occupied, herself wandering the castle in content solitude. If she closed her eyes, she could make believe that she was looking forward to seeing Jareth again, that the places within her that had once been dark and warm and comfortable in the words love and trust had not been replaced by hollow, colourless spaces of unease and fear.

A spiralling whine of static crossed from her right ear to her left. She turned her head, just so, a fraction, and the corners of her lips twitched.

"Linda Cornell Williams Goblin Queen," a flurry of voices said. They passed like newspaper pages down an alley, and then only the deep voice remained. Like Jareth. So much like Jareth. "Hello, Linda." She shrank away from it.

"You have nothing to fear," it said. "Are you waiting for someone?"

From the corner of her eye, she could make out the blurred suggestion of a figure. A tall man in a two piece suit and a smart tie and clean-cut hair, slicked back, moving from blacks and whites and greys to the green-tinged aftermath of too much sunlight. The effect was like a badly tuned television set, or a third-generation video tape. The figure wobbled and cracked sideways, came back saturated in pink and blue edges, then dropped back into B&W. It raised a cigarette to its lips, the motion making it look skinnier, cheekbones and the ridges at the sides of its face popping out.

"Would you like to hear a story?" it said.

Linda folded her hands on her lap. Her shoulders dropped.

The figure raised its cigarette to its lips. A bright, high contrast orange dot burst like a flare, then dyed out to a purple afterimage. The figure exhaled multicoloured pixels.

"Once upon a time," it said, "there lived a man named David Jones…"

* * *

Jareth hovered within himself. What remained of his senses was concentrated on nothingness and his consciousness trapped within it. If he thought about it hard enough, though, he found he could move forward. He pictured his palms pressed against himself, pushing and straining all so that he could inch forward a few paces at a time. He pushed again. Patience, he told his body. We have time.

I don't want time. I want to make them hurt.

Patience.

After a while, he could feel his chest again. He held onto the thought of his chest—rib cage, skin over that, sternum, nipples (two), stomach, a back and shoulder blades behind all of that—and constructed careful mental patterns for his upper arms and hips and thighs. Once he had these, it was only a matter of time before he had a head, lower arms next, lower legs. He continued to push himself forward, a body without hands and feet. Until, finally, he felt his toes and his fingertips.

There was a gaping hole where his left eye should have been.

Patience. It will grow back.

I want out of here. I want—

Patience.

—I want that sorry little girl. Stupid, sorry little girl.

Linda's daughter?

He spat at the voice in his head. With one final push, he broke from nothingness. Bare feet touched down on the cool grass outside an aged, clapboard house. He thought of pants and a shirt. The effort left him panting. With some effort, he drew his fingertips down the left side of his face, pulled bandaging down over his marred eye socket. Then, he walked into the house.

He was immaterial enough that he did not worry about whether he could walk through the walls or not. He was as a ghost, a mere afterimage of himself. But he had ways of taking the girl, and the aboveground portal was so close that he could feel the distant tug and pull of it even in his weakened state. It fed him, and he held onto it like unravelling, tangled threads.

A loose set of crossroads branched out in front of him. One hallway leading towards a bathroom, another towards the den, a third widening into the kitchen. Hovering between the crossroads was a narrow, carpeted staircase. Jareth climbed the staircase. His feet barely touched the carpet, flimsy and inconsequential as a projected spook in a cheap carnival ride, as he guarded his power. He did not even bother with opening the girl's bedroom door, simply walked through it.

Sorry, sorry little girl.

He paused, sniffed the air. Tinged at the edges with cold, a breeze coming through a window that had been cracked open. Screened. Crack not big enough for a child to have slipped through. No, she had not escaped. He sniffed again, prodded, pushed, and waited. Ageing, plush toys laced with years of a child's sweat, wooden floorboards scrubbed clean with chlorine, a hint of strawberry shampoo and soap, and there, just beneath the surface, a trace of crow's wings, a brief nip of magic, blood and burning wood. Jaret's fists clenched.

She was not there.

She was not in the house. He did not even have to check. She was not there.

Jareth looked down. A man was sprawled out on the floor, legs wide and bent at odd angles, his back curved as he slumped against a chest of drawers. He sat like a broken marionette, a silly man with curling black hair, stubble, flabby muscles and a white t-shirt and boxers. The dear husband. The loving father. He slept under a spell, chest rising and falling with ease, a moronic half-smile on his lips.

"She forgot all about you, you know," Jareth said.

He drew back his foot and kicked the man below the jaw. He toppled over, unaware, and Jareth kicked his ribs once, twice, six and twelve times.

Then he began to walk out of the house. Only there was something, on the first floor, just out of eyesight. The flickering, blue glow of a television screen. It had not been there as Jareth had walked in. He found himself drawn to it, neck muscles tense as he willed himself to let it be, to move on, yet continued to walk towards it. One step. One step more, and he stood in the den. The television screen broke into thin bands of blue and white, ghosts of yellow and pink crossing back and forth like currents along power lines. It was like looking at a videotaped screen, grainy and unsteady. It warped and coughed, and Jareth could almost make out voices, a progression of harmonizing pitches and snatches of spoken babble, even as none of the voices said the same thing.

They said, "King" and "Jareth" and "Goblin King" and "Jones" and "Weddell" and "David," and they said, "Hail always never forever for now perhaps." And a deep voice, like the fear of growing old, like the shock of listening to himself on tape or an answering machine, unfurling like cigarette smoke to wink, "Him, you, us, myself."

"Myself," Jareth murmured.

A face smiled at him from the screen, a B&W man in a 50s suit and slicked back hair and he had Jareth's face, gaunt and sharpened by the years into a whole made up of bones and lined flesh. He opened his mouth and said, "Oh, but I do think to myself, sometimes." And he winked one clear, perfect, blue left eye. "You can be me for a little while longer. She has gone from you."

Jareth put his fist through the screen.

Shards of glass followed him as he left that place, blue and blurring, shifting sideways as their images broke away into pixels and finally into static.

* * *

Pam thought about the word failure. He thought about failure towards his kingdom and he thought about failure towards the castle protocols and failure towards his king. But, mostly, he thought about personal failure, about the things he had done and those he had not and those he should have done. Too many things had been left undone and too many had been done that, on reflection, had, perhaps, not been terribly important. Carpeting the third floor corridors, for example. That had taken a good part of three months, at the end of which mauve had finally been decided upon as to colour. That left carpet thickness and design and square feet. Something like a smile rippled out across Pam's face. He did not bother to think about the things left undone.

His king stood at the centre of the throne room.

"Your majesty," Pam said, "your eye…"

"It'll heal," Jareth said.

"Very well, your majesty."

"Where is she?"

"Sire…?"

Jareth drew his lips back over his teeth. Then the look faded and he looked merely thoughtful. "You surprise me, Pam. I rule over hundreds of goblins within this city, possibly thousands of creatures more. I've got a dwarf out near the borders of The Labyrinth who just reeks of coiled disobedience. My kingdom is made up of the foolish and the insane and the mindless. And you are none of those things."

"Thank you, your majesty."

"You have served me well." He lowered his head, strands of hair brushing against the white bandage over his left eye. He said nothing else for a long while.

Pam breathed deeply. He drew in breath and observed as his core being fell away to nothing but his lungs expanding within his rib cage. He could hear his brain, in his own voice, pulsing out the word "hum," physically pushing away any other thoughts. It was one thing he could do, that he would not leave undone. He would not fail that little girl, so he thought "hum" and he drew in breath after breath, and he waited for Jareth's eyes to harden and snap up towards him.

When they did, Pam wondered that he did not even think to flinch.

"Get out of my sight," Jareth said. "I'll find her without you. She's got your magic on her. It'll only be a matter of finding her." Then, "I am displeased, Pam. I am greatly displeased."

"As am I, your majesty." He drew in breath, forced his mind to be nothing but the hallway echoes of his words. "I cannot condone, I cannot stand by what you have done. You have taken a human child outside of The Labyrinth's rules, you have taken the woman, Linda, and you would now take her daughter." Deep breaths. Just keep breathing. "You are not above the rules, Jareth. Not even you. The rules are old, and none of us have the right to bend them to our will."

Jareth smiled.

"I am weak," he said. "I've been hurt. How unbecoming of you, that you choose now to question my reign. To rebel."

Pam stood as before, breathing deeply, arms relaxed at his sides, back straight. "The rules of The Labyrinth are old, Jareth, and—regardless of personal feeling or, perhaps, because of it—I derive a great deal of pleasure from honouring those rules. I regard it as a matter of personal failure if I were to willingly and knowingly disobey or disregard the rules." He paused, considered his words, then said, with a bow, "Your majesty." Then, "I cannot allow you to take Linda Williams' daughter"

"I see."

Jareth raised his right arm. He brought it forward, then back. It cost him a great deal. Pam knew this. The veins along his neck and temples stood out, his teeth bared in a grimace. Pam saw all of this, and then he was already off his feet and his body had been dashed against the throne room wall. He felt a shudder go down his body, like a fine crack and like a deep rend from the back of his neck right down into his feet and his hands. Violence shook him into white, warping and disarranging his bones so that he knew his head was lolling uncontrollably. Thoughts spilled out, and he could barely acknowledge them or keep track of them. Above the images and thoughts and thoughts of images, he could hear a fractured narration in his own voice—

—did not think—I do believe—did not—do believe—could not—I fear he—believe—cannot believe—I hope—so hard to think—neck—something is—I do believe that he—majesty—is safe—I hope—I do believe—that little girl—never thought—I think—her majesty is—my neck is—do not believe—I do think—please be safe—he—I do believe—my neck—your majesty—believe—believebelievebeli—eve—think—is broken—oddodd—how odd—do—do—believebelieve—neck is—please be safe—broken—broken—

The Advisor Royal lay in a slump against the throne room wall, his neck still lolling gently as the final electric pulses of his brain racked through him. Jareth looked down on him. As Pam died, his spells died with him, and Jareth knew that Sarah was no longer in The Labyrinth, had not been in The Labyrinth even as Pam had tried to protect her. He knew that Linda's husband was even now waking up to a broken rib in his daughter's bedroom, a fat bubble of blood at the corner of his lower lip. He knew where Linda was.

And he went to her.

* * *

A tall, pale woman in black, dressed in darkness and a part of it. She stood at the end of the corridor, waiting for him. Her hands were clasped and hanging loosely below her stomach, as patient as a stone sentinel. She inclined her head to him as he walked towards her.

"Jareth," she said.

He looked at her. There was anger in his face, the anger of a petulant child. His hair was mousy brown and brushed his jaw in matted strands, his clothes soiled. He was not strong enough to even bother with pulling glamour over himself, to come striding towards her in his black clothes and his feathered cape. The shards of glass around him were fizzing and crackling into blue television static. Linda took in these details and then, finally, the white bandage over his left eye. She had not expected that. Pam said he had been hurt. She had not wanted to think of what that could really mean. Her hands twitched.

"Jareth," she said again.

"I'm tired," he said. And, as he said it, the words dropped over him and pushed his anger down the lines of his body, so that he sagged and appeared just as he was, a wounded and beaten man. "I'm very tired, love."

"I know. You _do _seem to make things very complicated for yourself. Is this what you planned all along?"

"No, I—" He frowned. "I wanted…" His voice tailed away, then he said, "I wanted you. I didn't know that then, but I wanted you. And—"

"And you had me. You brought me here."

"It wasn't like that. You came with me."

He would have said more, but a _something_ caught his eye, a hovering sense of shape and bleached colour just behind Linda. He could barely make it out, but he could imagine it, could almost hear a ripple of sound waves go through it, smell the hot metal casings of an old radio, see the B&W man in a two piece suit. Smoking. Smiling. Winking his perfect left eye.

"It was you," Jareth said.

Linda said nothing.

"You hid that sorry little girl from me," Jareth said. "_You _did that. You were there. How dare you?"

"How dare you?" the man echoed, slow and mild in his surprise. He took a drag from his translucent, shivering cigarette as a cascade of radio frequency pitches spread out "how" and "dare" and "you" amongst themselves. "It's quite simple, Jareth. King Jareth, I should say. Interesting tradition, that. I never would've requested anything like it. But it gave Sankrėl some pleasure, and I can't say as I would deny a goblin that. Pleasure is all you have, at the end of the day, isn't it?" He exhaled neon pixels. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"You're not Jareth. Jareth was not human. Jareth didn't look like me."

"No, I didn't. But I no longer have a body of my own, as I'm merely…" He tapped the end of his cigarette against his lips in thought. "Well, I'm not sure what I am. Sometimes I think I'm a thought, or a memory. Other times I think I might just be a soul, or an echo. The others are echoes. I don't doubt they could take shape," he shifted sideways into muddled colours then, as if invisible hands were slapping the side of a television set, searching in vain for colour as only B&W came through, "someday. But they're not strong enough yet. Sound," he said with a smile. "They're only sound, buried underground."

Jareth tore his stare away from the man in the suit, transferred it to Linda. She was looking at him, her face unreadable. Traces of her dignity as queen teased at the corners of her cheeks and the set of her lips, brushing up against the remnants of curiosity and—Jareth cringed—pity.

"What have you done?" he said.

"I wanted to see my daughter. I had forgotten her. But I came here, and then I could remember again. You made me forget my daughter."

"I only wanted—"

"You made me forget my husband, and my family, and my life. All of it. Even now, I can barely remember Robert. I know his name. I know I loved him. But I can't even remember the colour of his hair." She hugged her sides. "But I know you. I saw you, the night George Underwood's son was stolen. You were up in a tree. It's funny, I can see you clearly now, lounging there like some sultan on a pillow made of bark, like some fairy tale jinn. You even took _that_ memory from me. You made it so that I saw an owl, and then I forgot I had even seen that. It must be your favourite pastime, wiping memories."

He cast a sideways glance at the B&W man, a nervous dart of his eye, his features trembling under rapid, shallow breaths. He wanted them to be alone, he wanted the voices and the figures in the darkness to go away. "Leave us," he said.

"Cannot will not will remain leave."

"_Leave_ us!"

A low, amused voice tutted. "You're never alone, Jareth. Surely you know that by now. However." A fizz, like the currents within cathode tubes dying down abruptly, and the radio sounds and television image were gone.

"He—they—protected Sarah," Linda said. "They knew you would try to go after her."

"And Pam kept her shielded from me while I was in the castle. Yes. Everyone has seen fit to disobey me today." He put his hands on his hips as he spoke, a distorted version of himself in jeans and a t-shirt and dust stained feet. He pushed back his hair, held it the back of his head with one hand before he sighed and dropped the hand to his side. "But it's all over now. It was all a misunderstanding. We'll go back to the main rooms of the castle, and we'll have lunch or dinner, whatever you wish."

Linda's lips drew back in a tired smile. "You're amazing," she said. "Even now, when you can barely affect me, you're still trying to do this."

"Linda…"

"He told me a story, the man in the darkness." She nodded, as if satisfied at last after searching in vain for an elusive name or connection, as he identified the man in the darkness as the first King Jareth. "He created The Labyrinth. He told me that in the story, although, of course, he didn't bother to tell me _he _was King Jareth. He told me about David Jones."

Jareth stood looking at her.

"I met a David Weddell once," Linda said. "Took me into a picture." Then, in the even, spaced voice of a mother reading a fairy tale, "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, you fought your way here to the castle beyond the goblin city."

"Why are you doing this?"

"And your will is strong, and your kingdom is great."

"I gave you everything you wanted. Every wish, I granted. Linda, please. I love you."

"Love?" She scoffed in incredulity. "You tricked me into The Labyrinth. You kept me here against my will. You couldn't stand the thought of failure, so you made me do everything you wanted. Do you call that love? My God, I was your doll, you foolish man. You dressed me and gave me a pretty house—but you never let me choose or accept anything of my own free will. You love me as a child loves a favourite toy." Her eyes roamed the ground, and she did nothing to hide the regret on her face. She was pale and vulnerable and sad. "And I was a fool for not realizing this sooner. I actually thought I loved you."

She cut through his attempt to talk without pity. "Your will is strong," she said. "And your kingdom is great."

"Don't do this. I beg of you. Linda. Please, stay with me." He raised his arms, made as if to take a step forward, hold her. But his hands were only pale outlines. His face crumpled as he looked at her, pleading. "Don't do this."

Linda took a step away from Jareth, stepped closer to the darkness. "You will never have my daughter." She stepped back further into the darkness, until her hair and the skirts of her dress were a part of it. "You will not have me. I swear this upon my life, and I wish for The Labyrinth to hear this promise. I give my soul to The Labyrinth for this promise." She dipped her hands into the blackness behind her, so that all that remained was her pale face and neck and shoulder blades, framed by complete darkness.

Distant voices gathered and waited.

Jareth took a step forward on feet that no longer touched the ground, no longer had a real shape.

"And I wish," Linda said, "for you to be unable to stop me."

"Don't—" Jareth jerked to a stop. He could not lift his left leg. He could not shift his right. He tossed left and right, growing more and more frustrated, as he could not budge his feet. He raised his hand, but it was no longer there. His arms had dissolved a little ways beyond his elbow. He cursed, summoned magic with his mind.

Nothing.

The sigh and rustle of thousands of glass shards falling to the ground surrounded him. They dissipated and then disappeared.

"Your will is strong," Linda said, "and my will is as strong as yours." She shook her head sadly. "You have no more power over me, Jareth."

Linda closed her eyes. The darkness moved forward with an electronic sigh. It crept up her shoulder blades and up her neck, like a lover's embrace, until it seemed as if gentle hands were cupping her face, holding her close as they drew her back towards them.

Jareth struggled where he stood. "You stupid woman," he said through clenched teeth. "You _stupid_, stupid woman."

Linda's eyes opened just before the darkness finally closed around her. And in her eyes Jareth could see triumph and regret and peace and pity and no trace of love for him.

He began to shout then. He cursed her and he cursed himself. He cursed the static echo of The Labyrinth denying him even the right to dissolve as Linda defeated him. He shouted until his throat was sore and strained and his voice cracked. And then, his head dropped against his chest and he knew that he could move again.

The darkness stood in front of him.

Linda was gone.

And there was an expression on Jareth's face, something final and heavy, although he could not tell if it was sadness or happiness. He was crying. He was smiling.


	10. Coda

**Coda**

Skerplň the Messenger pulled a lopsided cart behind him. It was piled high with rolled bits of parchment. In his free hand he held a long list of names, the heads of all the teams and details and crews scattered throughout The Labyrinth. He paused on his way to scratch out the Proper Swamp Fermentation Crew. Next on the list was the Maintenance Detail. Outer edges. The lucky bastards who could slag off as they pleased, far off as they were from Goblin City. Skerplň's cart rattled and heaved over roots and pebbles, until he came across a dwarf in a heavily patched, red leather cap. The dwarf glared at him, then went right back to sucking on a clay pipe, feet propped up on an upturned bucket.

"You Humble?" Skerplň said.

"Ain't no such thing," the dwarf said. "It's _Hoggle_." He chewed on the end of his pipe. "Some kind of message from his nibs, I gather."

"If by his nibs you mean King Jareth, then yeah, from his nibs." Skerplň pulled a parchment cylinder from its pile, then rummaged in one of several saddlebags tied to the sides of the cart. He took a small pouch from it and tossed it at Hoggle. "Them's your wages for The Londonderry Shift. And there's one of them parchments for you too."

Hoggle ignored the parchment. Likely some useless proclamation or other, some path leading to nowhere getting set up somewhere to the east. He pried open the pouch and grunted at the onyx inside. Sizeable. Valuable. Mighty generous of Jareth, all unpleasant things about him considered.

"Don't bother showing up at work tomorrow," Skerplň said. He scoffed and spat at Hoggle's expression. "Don't look so blinking worried. Advisor Royal's as passed away. Funeral's tomorrow. Labyrinth-wide holiday. Day of mourning and whatnot."

"Pam is dead?"

Skerplň shrugged, then picked up the handle of his cart. "If by Pam you mean the Advisor Royal, then yeah, Pam's dead. Hardly knew ye, and all that."

"What of?"

"Old age, as I gather."

"He wasn't that old."

Skerplň shrugged again. "He's dead. Can't see as to what difference it makes _what _he died of. He's still dead, and I'm grateful for the day off. You should too, dwarf."

As he rattled away, lobbying another wad of spit at the path, Hoggle sat, fingering the parchment cylinder. Likely the official announcement, times for the viewing of the body, the funeral, long list of Pam's achievements. Hoggle tossed the parchment into the shed behind him. Then, he topped up his pipe, lit it, and sat back to smoke it in peace and quiet.

He had liked Pam. He would miss him. Stuffy, officious kind, Pam. But Hoggle owed his freedom to him. Fool of a Jareth would have made Hoggle Advisor Royal if not for Pam. And he had not been all that bad, really, aside from his penchant for way too many words.

"I'll smoke to ya, Pam," Hoggle said. "Flights of owls take you to your rest."

Hoggle remained at his post at Maintenance Detail on the day of the funeral. The following day, his pay rate was cut for the second time since King Jareth's coronation. And a week later it was announced that the post of Advisor Royal was henceforth abolished, nulled, voided, and declared obsolete.

Pam was known from then on as The Last Advisor Royal, as was proper and right according to protocol.

* * *

Mayte Orozco was no longer Mayte Orozco. This caused her a great deal of distress. She had become quite attached to that particular human skin. Ah well. Easy come, easy go. At least the Underwood kid was safe in Kent, and Mayte was—thus far—safe from The Labyrinth.

That she had failed to help Linda Williams haunted her. She dared not set foot in The Labyrinth again, had already cast several concealment and obfuscation spells around herself, and so she had no way of knowing what had become of Linda.

This much Mayte knew: Linda had not returned aboveground.

Worse and most hurtful of all, Doña Orozco had to be told that her daughter had been found dead in her Londonderry, New Hampshire apartment. Smoking in bed. Fell asleep. Everybody else in the apartment building had gotten out, one Filipino woman crossing herself over and over and murmuring of an angel in a vision, warning her.

"Was beautiful, glowing angel. Smaller than pictures, but I know it was angel. She warn me. She tell me of flames, and I take my family outside, warn neighbours."

Doña Orozco sat in her room for days, dressed in black, fingering a rosary and gazing at a picture of Mayte. She would wear black for nearly two years, a picture of Mayte pinned inside her blouse, next to a scapular of San Antonio de Padua and Our Lady of Altagracia.

In February 1979, her niece, Gabriela, had a baby daughter. She brought her to meet Doña Orozco on a Sunday, kissing the tiny girl's forehead and murmuring, "Say hello to your _tia abuela_, eh? Say hello." Then she passed the baby, carefully, almost reverently to Doña Orozco. She stood back, expectant, wringing her hands. "Well?" she said after a while. "Do you think so too? 'Cause Miguel says she looks just like…"

"Mayte," Doña Orozco said. "She looks just like Mayte." She smiled, her face cragged and sunburnt. "Ay, _mija_, it's like seeing her all over again. _Dios me la bendiga._" She kissed the baby's forehead loudly, paper thin lips trembling. "What is her name?"

Gabriela exchanged a look with her brother, Miguel. She gave her aunt a shy, devoted smile. "Mayte. Juan and I named her Mayte. Mayte Angela Dominguez." She reached out and stroked her daughter's fine, curly hair. "For you, _tia_, and for her."

Doña Orozco cried. And, in her arms, Mayte Angela Dominguez gurgled and smiled and could not wait until she could talk, because she was going to tell Doña Orozco how much she loved her every single day. Maybe she would even tell her about The Labyrinth, spin tall tales and summer night yarns from it, about piskies and goblins and dwarves and this one piskie who grew bored of it all and maybe, just maybe, came to live in the Dominican Republic.

"What self-respecting piskie would do that, _mija_?"

"You never know, _tia abuela_," Mayte would say. "Maybe she just really liked _tostones_."

Mayte remained in the Dominican Republic, in the city of Santiago de los Caballeros. Over time, she became quite famous for her Tarot readings. Some said she spoke in voices, distant and ancient voices, like the crackle of autumn leaves or hundreds of twigs snapping underfoot. Some said they could see a glowing aura around her, pink and red and blue and purple, depending on her mood. People came from miles to have their fortune read by her.

To her never-ending delight, none of those people ever turned out to be goblins.

* * *

Sandra sat in her bedroom and rocked Baby Joe in her arms. She had not kept any newspaper clippings jumping all ecstatic over the news of the miraculous return of Joe Underwood, The Stolen Kent Baby. She left the tears and the community spirit and the late news babble to the people of Kent. George had kept all the balloons, cards and presents the neighbours and the elected councillor and random strangers had piled at their doorstep. He jammed them into one corner of the hall closet, talking about a one day when he would show them to Joe. But Sandra barely thought of them.

She thought of Joe, and of how light he was in her arms.

In the kitchen, George flipped through a photo album. He had a six-pack of beer and, after a long while searching through the photo album, a picture he liked of a lanky young man with mousy brown hair and mismatched eyes. George propped the picture up against an ashtray, dropped back on his seat and looked at it for a good five minutes.

He cracked open his first beer and raised it to the photo.

"Sandra's not gonna like this," he said. "'Cause I'm gonna get well an' good pissed. But it's fittin', Davey, 'cause I'm drinkin' to you, mate. Wherever you are."

He gulped down a long drink of beer.

"Here's to you, David Jones."

And George Underwood sat and drank and held a wake for his friend.

* * *

Robert Williams packed all of his belongings into his old Datsun. He helped Sarah dismantle her bedroom and did not say a word as she took as many things as she could that had belonged to Linda. It was only natural, the school councillor had said, and part of the healing process. Give her time. Give her space. Give her love.

The TV cops had knocked on Robert's door on 16 September 1977.

"Mr Williams?" Henriksen said, rumbling into his leather jacket. "I'm afraid we have some very bad news."

Robert nodded. His rib still hurt, from whatever had happened to him that night he had panicked, when he had thought that Sarah was in danger. He could not remember much about that night, but he must have slipped, must have somehow crashed into Sarah's bedroom dresser. How that had broken his rib, Robert could not begin to explain. Not in any way that made sense. The doctor said the fractures were consistent with a beating. His jaw had been swollen. But the police had discovered no evidence of a break-in, no footprints, no fingerprints, nothing to show that anyone but Robert and Sarah had been in the house. Robert decided it was best to think about it as little as possible. And he decided it was best to just nod at the TV cops, Henriksen and Dorsey, because he could not think of what else would be appropriate in light of what he knew they were going to say.

"Sir," Dorsey said. "We found your wife. I'm so sorry, sir."

Linda, his wife, was found within an automobile the New York City police had pulled from the Hudson River. Passenger seat. Seatbelt fastened. The impact had killed her. The driver side seatbelt had been unbuckled, the window rolled down. The police had dragged the body of David Weddell out of the river two days after they found Linda.

Robert identified her at the morgue. He gazed down at her still, pale face, and he thought of wax dolls, of life-sized porcelain. He bent down and kissed her forehead (his rib protested), and then he left.

She had eloped with David Weddell. The police uncovered their apartment in Manhattan. Dorsey handed Robert an enveloped filled with newspaper clippings and a _Playbill_ magazine with Linda on the cover.

But, Robert's mind said, but how could she have been there all along? How could the police not have known? Linda Williams, on Broadway. How could they have missed that?

And then, he simply did not think about it anymore. He found, as the days wore on, that he remembered things incorrectly anyway. There had never been a nation-wide hunt for his wife. Everybody in Londonderry knew she had eloped with David Weddell. He knew as well, had always known. He had been the luckiest man in the world for a good seven years.

Now Linda was dead.

Now David Weddell was dead.

Robert sold their house, moved himself and Sarah to a two-bedroom rental across town, close to the border with Derry. His psychologist agreed that it was a good idea. Distance. Time to heal and put his life back in order.

Sarah kept the envelope of clippings, the _Playbill _issue, Linda's costumes, her perfumes, as many things as she could hide in her closet. She thought Robert did not know. She worried her homeroom teacher for a few weeks, talking about doors burned into walls and a man with a crow's head and of faeries and how the owl no longer followed her around. And then, she simply stopped. She gathered her toys and played by herself and completed her work and behaved very politely to all of her classmates.

"We'll keep an eye on her, Mr Williams," the homeroom teacher said. "Children cope with tragedy in a vastly different way from adults."

Fantasy. Sarah coped with fantasy, and a closet full of her mother's belongings. Robert let it be.

After a while, after the years had passed and Robert had decided it was time to return to Londonderry (to a new house) (far from the old one), he began to notice a rather striking blonde at Sarah's school's functions. She would catch his eye across the auditorium, look away, search him out again a few minutes later. Made him rather jumpy. In a not altogether unpleasant way.

"Irene?" Tom said over lunch. "My brother knows her. She's got a niece a few years older than Sarah." He chewed on a fry, then said, in a knowing way, "She's, ah, not married."

She married Robert on 4 March 1984.

And Robert often thought of Linda, and he thought of her with love and regret and maybe even with anger and jealousy. He thought of her alive and smiling, holding his hand, and he thought of her pale face sinking below the Hudson River. But these thoughts came to him less and less, until Linda became only the vague recollection of some great pain.

And the vague recollection of great love.

* * *

There was an owl in the tree outside the Londonderry Middle School. Sarah sat at the bus stop bench and watched it. Students yelled and hollered and bubbled with conversation all around her, their voices mingled with those of parents and teachers and car horns and school buses lining up as hundreds of people battled their way back home. Too many people. Too many eyes. If Sarah had been alone, she would not have sat at the bench, merely watching the owl.

She would nod her head, and she would curtsy. As was proper.

The owl was a king, after all. And the king was madly in love with her. With her, a (nearly) fourteen year old girl. He was madly in love with her, and he knew how forlorn (that was a good, hefty word) Sarah (Princess Sarah) was, and what indignities she suffered at the hands of her wicked stepmother, a queen with the ludicrous name of Irene.

Really, who had ever heard of a Queen Irene? It was too ridiculous.

Now Queen Linda, there was a name. The beautiful Queen Linda, who had won the heart of King Robert (before he had gone off and done something as vile as marrying the wicked Irene) (obviously under a treacherous spell, one day to be broken), but had died tragically while Princess Sarah was only a child (the tragedy was vague, and Sarah only knew that it somehow involved Queen Linda floating down a river, framed by her long black hair and beautiful, midnight black clothes). Queen Linda had been brave and noble and courageous, all qualities that Princess Sarah had inherited, and which had drawn the attention of the owl. Who was a king, of course.

The king of the goblins. And he was madly in love with her.

And Sarah knew this was all a great deal of make-believe and possibly even nonsense, but it made her very happy. Dad would say, "Such an imagination, sweetie," and leave it at that, while (her wicked stepmother) Irene would say, "It's just a barn owl, Sarah. Probably escaped from the zoo. They really should keep a closer eye on this kind of thing." Sarah pitied them. Who wanted to live in a world where barn owls were simply barn owls?

No, the world, _her_ world, was different.

Up in its tree, the owl would have agreed with her. It preened and blinked one wide blue eye, its damaged left eye open and fixed on Sarah. Sorry, sorry little Sarah.

You shall never have her, Linda had said.

Not for lack of trying, Jareth thought. Not for lack of trying, love.


End file.
